Thank you, Pastor Stan, for the invitation. Is our mic on? All right. Appreciate the opportunity to be here to share with you this morning, and always enjoy our monthly pastor's fellowship that we get to share together. Now, one thing I realize, brother, is that I have no watch, no clock, and we have something we have to do after this. So if somebody will hold up time cards or something so I don't get too carried away, we will be in good shape. Well, the pastor asked me if I would share with you about the Reformation and why it matters. And as you might imagine, you not only could speak for hours on that topic, you could write a multi-volume encyclopedia when you stop to think of all the things, all the differences that have been made because of not just Martin Luther but numerous men and women who have stood firmly on the Word of God even to the point of laying down their very lives. But as has already been referenced this morning, it really all comes down to the Reformation principle of sola scriptura. Scripture alone will be our authority, one of the things that we as Baptists cherish in our heritage, having come into being in just under, think about this, just under a century after Reformation Day, Baptists as we know them, were born. We are the offspring of the Protestant Reformation, a people who are a people of the book. And if you look at our history, we can especially pick on Southern Baptists since that's who we are. When you look at our history and you see where we got out in the weeds, there is a direct connection between getting in the weeds theologically And by that I mean getting into into liberalism and various issues it is directly consistent with a low view of Scripture as your view of Scripture Falls there are consequences that go with that the doctrine of the church also falls in fact when you consider the need for the Protestant Reformation it's important to remember that while Martin Luther gets the headlines for what happened on October 31st, 1517. It's important to remember that this had been going on on smaller levels for multiple generations. Stop and consider the work of John Wycliffe was going on 150 years plus before Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses on the cathedral door in Wittenberg Germany so there were many faithful people who understood the centrality of scripture However, the official position of the church was then and still is to this day if you were to get a Catholic to give you an honest answer there are really two sources of authority for their church there are scripture and history and And if you begin to look at their doctrine, especially in its more questionable areas, which lead to errors, you'll notice which one wins. That if pressed in the corner, history is dominant. If you look at some of the most erroneous doctrines that the Catholic Church ever embraced things like the Immaculate conception of Mary By the way, if you ever see that in a church title, that's not about Jesus That's about Mary. It's the idea that Mary was born sinless Therefore she could give birth to a sinless son, but it also raises the question if there was already a sinless person Why did we need Jesus? Other doctrines like the assumption of Mary, the idea that Mary didn't die, that she was assumed like Elijah up into heaven. And you ask, where in the Bible did they get those ideas? And the answer is nowhere. Those are papal declarations that some pope in history said, sitting ex cathedra, you know, everything Catholicism is in Latin, you have to translate sometimes, that if he's sitting in the chair, if he says something, It is believed to be without error. And that is the source of those, what we would consider to be very, very wild and very dangerous. doctrines There are three particular doctrinal issues that made the the call for sola scriptura so necessary the difference between the centrality of the mass and the centrality of the pulpit If you go to a Catholic Church today, you will notice what is front and center It is the altar so that the mass, the re-sacrificing of Jesus can take place over and over and over again. When the Protestant Reformation began to take hold, in the new churches that were planted as well as the churches that existed that were shifting in the Reformation direction, a radical architectural thing took place. The altar got shifted and the pulpit became central. If you ever wonder, why is this thing that you don't normally see anywhere else? Oh, we've got lightweight versions of them we call podiums and lecterns and things like that. But you don't have one of these in your living room unless you're a very unusual person. They don't have one of these at Walmart. They don't have one of these at your favorite ball stadium. There is something unique about what my dad and the people of older generations referred to as the sacred desk. And we need to be reminded sometimes that we don't stand here to be good counselors, even though the Bible gives good counsel. We don't stand here to be entertainers, although the Bible certainly does grab us when we take it seriously. We don't stand here for any other purpose other than to declare the Word of God in all of its power. The centrality of the pulpit. The writer of Hebrews had already told the church that the work of Jesus, Hebrews 9 tells us, was a work that was once for all. In fact, even Peter tells us in very simple terms. Y'all excuse me, I've lost all my bookmarks here. 1 Peter 3, 18, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring this to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. That there was no purpose to pretend, which is what it is, to re-sacrifice Jesus over and over and over. What Jesus did on the cross when Jesus said it is finished, that's exactly what he meant. It is done. For it to have to be redone would imply that there is some kind of flaw in what was done the first time. And we know that Christ provided a perfect atonement for sinners once for all time. And not only was there the issue of mass versus the pulpit, there's also the issue of salvation through the church versus salvation through the gospel. And when you begin to look at literally the bully pulpit of the Catholic Church in that time, you realize that particularly for the uneducated masses, and by the way, that was most people. In fact, if you look back in your family tree, it's probably like mine. My first ancestor, who went to Logan County, Kentucky, by the way, that's down below Bowling Green, if you want a point of reference, He died about 1815, and when his will was written before his death, he signed it with an X, which tells me he was illiterate. Well, if we think that was an issue in the 19th century in America, imagine what it was like in the 16th century in Europe. where most people would have been illiterate and what was written was being read from Latin so even if you were literate you would have to be educated to an even higher level to be able to read and understand a language that was not the vernacular of the people and so they were absolutely dependent upon whatever the priest and the leaders of the church told them And you may remember that Luther's response was to the selling of indulgences. Now that's not chocolate cake, by the way. I do enjoy indulging in a little chocolate cake, but it was something far more serious than that. It was, if you want to put it in layman's terms, it was not a get out of hell, but a get out of purgatory ticket, particularly sold to family members who wanted to buy one for their long lost loved ones. You see, they believe that you go to purgatory, that only the really, really bad people would go straight to hell. Everybody else goes to purgatory to do a certain amount of time until all their sins get worked out and they finally make their way to heaven. Well, there was this man named John Tetzel. And Tetzel's job was to sell indulgences. History tells us he was a short pudgy man who could walk into town and stand on a stump and really sell it even before he sold it, if you will. He created the need for this and could rival any Hallmark movie when it came to raising your emotions and thinking about poor, lost, mom or dad, who you think is now in purgatory, that if you'll just pay these few coins, as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs. That was a little rhyme. By the way, it even rhymes in German, which was the language he was preaching in. This wasn't, here's the sad part, that wasn't just a theological issue, it was a practical issue. There's this little place in Rome. I haven't been there. It's even got its own city called Vatican City. That's a separate city from Rome. This thing called St. Peter's Basilica. You've seen the famous painting from Michelangelo with the finger of God reaching down to man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That cost a lot of money. and in selling the people indulgences they were paying the way to complete things like that. Now if you were to read the 95 Theses, by the way you can look them up online and read them, you will find that at the time Martin Luther was very Catholic. He does not dismiss indulgences all the way, he does not dismiss the authority of the Pope but we see even then that not only did he have a problem thinking that people Would be buying these for all the wrong reasons. But you can see justification by faith like a sunrise already making its way to the horizon, even in those early years. As a Catholic monk. He would soon come to understand that salvation is not something that comes through the church. But it comes through the gospel. Acts 4.12 tells us that there's no other name given among men by which we must be saved. And that is the name of Jesus. And we only understand that through the preaching of the gospel. And there's one other, and then we're going to take a few moments in second Timothy for papal infallibility versus the infallibility and inerrancy of scripture. Again, you imagine the intimidation of a church that not only tells you it holds your salvation, but is led by a man that it tells you cannot be wrong. Cannot be wrong while numerous drunken parties are being held behind closed doors. A man that supposedly cannot be wrong while there are numerous concubines. roaming here and there. A man who apparently cannot be wrong while there's illegitimate papal children all over the countryside from generation to generation. A man who not only had a power that the scripture did not give him, a man that was more of a politician. If you wonder why Baptists have historically believed in the separation of church and state, Here we come to understand, when the wrong church holds the state, friends, you've got a disaster. And that's exactly what was going on. But Luther and those who came to understand the principle of Scola Scriptura understood that the infallibility is not in any pope or any cardinal or any high-ranking leader, not even in your favorite Baptist preacher. The infallibility is in the Word of God. If we're going to stand on something, we better be standing on the Word of God. That's why I want us to go for a few moments to 2 Timothy 4, probably the most complete statement that we have between the end of 2 Timothy 3 and the beginning of 2 Timothy 4 on the nature of scripture and what we need to be doing with it. By the way, when this was written, you will remember there were no chapter and verse divisions. Those were added later. So for Paul, this is all one seamless garment, if you will. That the word of God is living and active. Excuse me, I'm jumping to my wrong scripture here. I'm about to get into Hebrews 4. That all scripture, this is 2 Timothy 3.16, is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. So, in chapter 4, we read these words. Paul to Timothy, I solemnly charge you, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. You just think about that last statement and think about where Martin Luther stood in 1517. A church that was more known for the myths than it was known for the truth of the gospel. How do we keep that? By the way, there's another principle that came out of that. Semper Reformanda, always reforming. It's kind of like when your children clean their room. Now, I have enough children, and it only takes one to realize that sometimes children get this idea that if they've done it once, that's good enough. Not realizing that it's not going to be a matter of days, it's going to be a matter of hours, maybe even a matter of minutes before they prove that there is a, I don't know the Latin for simper, clean up your room. You're always going to need to revisit that. And even in 2024 as Southern Baptists who have stood on the Word of God for as long as we've existed, we still stand in need of coming back to the well, if you will, coming back to the source of truth and looking at who we are and looking at the Word of God and asking, do these match? And if they don't. You've got two options. Either you change, or you dismiss the Word of God. And in the 20th century, we've seen more groups do the latter than the former. We've seen entire denominations who have caved in to cultural pressures, immorality, absolute logical nonsense by letting go of the word to embrace the world. And it has been well pointed out that it is nothing less than a miracle of God that the Southern Baptist Convention for so many years can easily be traced even back into the 1950s, that we begin to drift theologically, that 1979, with the raising up of Adrian Rogers, God was doing a course correction to bring a moderate at best, pro-choice denomination back to its conservative stand on inerrancy. By the way, that has never happened in any other Christian denomination. Never. It's like riding a sled on a snowy hill. Once you go over the crest, you're gone. And sadly, they never came back. Well, it's pretty clear what Paul is telling Timothy to do here. You need to preach the word. Don't preach history. Don't preach opinion. Don't preach culture. Don't preach all the things that are cool to you that you think everybody else might want to hear about. You preach the word. And he tells us here that there's basically three ways you do it. And y'all don't forget, raise the flags when we're getting near the finish line. Number one, to preach it fearfully. Notice he builds up to that without even saying it explicitly in verse one. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom. Even his declaration to preach the word is fearful. There's nothing light and fluffy about preaching the word of God. And that's been one of the unintended consequences of a modern church growth movement. Some of the great counsel that I received early on in my training was the reality that you don't stand up here to be Jay Leno. Now kids, Jay Leno was one of the main Nighttime comedians back then. That's not why you're here. There may be people out there whose flesh is hungry for that, but you're not here to feed their flesh. And the reality is that you preach it before God, you preach it before the Christ, before whom you will stand in judgment one day. That that he will judge he says the living and the dead he will judge all people 2nd Corinthians 510 Paul says to the church for we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for what we've done in the body whether good or bad and at the top of the priority list above all of those things that could make the list is the declaration of the Word of God And he says, he also says his appearing, Jesus is going to come again. One day, you and I, brother Stan, will look Jesus in the eye. Man, if you've got an overconfidence issue this morning, I want you to let that marinate just a moment. That someday you and I will see Jesus face to face. And if we fritter away our opportunities to declare the word of God or we do it in such a way that makes it seem light and cavalier and optional. Oh, friend. When we see Jesus face to face, we'll know without a word being spoken. How we failed him if we take that approach. He is coming to establish his kingdom and the Bible says we will rule and reign with him And I don't think we're going to be popping bubblegum and playing video games when we do it That's a generation we live in everything is just light and silly and comical and it's just all my dad used to tell me as a child when I was not working as I should on the farm or in the wood shop, wherever we were. He said, son, you're acting as though the heavens are all full of days and they're all coming your way. Which was his country way of saying, you think this world is designed to cater to you? And it's not. And yet we've got grown folks way, way past teenage acne and all that kind of stuff who ought to know Very, very clearly, this life is not about us. This life is to be lived to the glory of God. Therefore, you preach His word fearfully. Secondly, you preach it consistently. when he says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Now, if you've ever pastored a church or if you just pay close attention to what pastors deal with in the ministry, you realize that there's a lot of different ways that pastors can get into hot water. There's leadership decisions that you can make. that people didn't agree with. You can make a joke and people didn't think it was funny and maybe they got insulted by it. But the primary way that you can get in trouble is by preaching the word. You just stand up and declare the truth. And I learned this a long time ago. There are people who love a recitation of elementary principles. There's a reason why the writer of Hebrews says, now moving beyond these things, because there's something in a lot of believers that loves to stay in the kiddie pool. You know, I've never known the lifeguards have to pull anybody out of the kiddie pool. The waves are not going to overwhelm you in the kiddie pool. Spiritually, those are the people who are 60, 70, 80 years old, and if you preach John 3, 16 every Sunday, they'll be absolutely satisfied, because they understand it, they've memorized it, and it really doesn't challenge them any further. But when you start preaching line by line, verse by verse, let me tell you something, I don't care how long you've been in church, the Word of God is going to eat your lunch. The Word of God is going to begin to read the mail that maybe nobody else is reading, but you know that God knows. And you begin to hear people say derogatory things. About preaching verse by verse, and I've come to realize now. There are people who do it in a boring fashion. And it's a travesty if you preach something as great as the Word of God in a boring fashion. But I've come to realize that often the problem is not with style. The problem is with content. People really don't want to be told that what they're doing is wrong. Especially when they're people of influence. They're people who have been in the church for as long as I've been alive. And yet the word of God is going to do that. But yet he says, you do it in season and out of season. You preach the word whether it's popular or not. You preach the word whether you feel like it or not. I want to tell you something. When you preach the word of God regularly, there are days that what you're preaching is so exciting, you need lead shoes to keep you on the floor. And then there are days when you come to the pulpit and you think, Lord, do I really have to tell them? And of course, the Lord never gives you a pass. And can I tell you something? One of the saddest things that I've observed in the last, really in the last year, was a pastor who, when he preached through what I would consider one of the books of the Bible that's not that difficult to preach through, but still contained statements about sin and about the judgment of God, I began to notice a pattern that he preached everything but that part. of the verse. Friend, that dog won't hunt. That's like saying, here, I'm going to sell you the car, everything but the engine. Because if we take the sin out, then we take out the need for the cross. And when you take the cross out, you have gutted the gospel. What are we talking about at that? Just behavior modification? Is it just a lecture in modern psychology? No, you do it even when you don't feel like it, and you preach it whether it's safe or not. And that's something that we can identify with very well. They could, Paul could identify with that very well. People in other parts of the world today can identify very well knowing if they declare the word of God, it may be the last thing they say, the sight of heaven. And yet when we declare it, we declare it consistently. There's nothing worse than somebody who waffles. Now, we do a lot of quick breakfast sometimes, and my wife will buy Eggo waffles. And my kids love those. But can I just tell you that by themselves, they taste kind of like my shoes. And what makes it even worse is if you pop those things in the toaster for about 20 seconds and you pull it out, it won't even stand up on its own. Like, this is disgusting. This is like a horse eating hay. I mean, yeah, it'll do something, but there's not a whole lot of flavor there. And that's exactly what the preaching of the Word becomes when you gut it of its difficult truths. And of course, when we think about the Reformation, well, if a man's going to stand and preach on sin, well, then he's going to end up condemning his own sin if he's living immorality behind closed doors. If he begins to preach on idolatry, he's got to address their own day-to-day idolatry and a great big idol that they just happen to be in the process of building. But you've got to preach it, because someday you'll give an account for it. Don't be like the pastor who... We were riding together one time, my dad, who was not a pastor, but everybody thought he was, because he was probably the preacher and his deacon you ever met. And he overheard one pastor say, talking about things that you had to deal with in church, especially with not standing on certain issues. And the man said this, well, people just don't realize what we have to do to keep our job. Excuse me. Did Jesus not warn in John 10 about the hireling that when the wolves come, the hireling runs because they're not his sheep. Why should he chance getting bitten himself? Oh, friend, what a sellout. To say, I love my job and I love my paycheck more than I love faithfulness to the word of God. Let me say something to you, I don't care what church you pastor, what Sunday school class you lead, on judgment day, you're not going to stand before the chairman of the search committee. On judgment day, you're not going to stand before the folks in the class. You're not going to stand before whoever the greatest contributors or critics were in your circle. You will stand before the one whose name you were supposed to be preaching. That leads us to the last part. Not only do we preach it fearfully and preach it consistently, we preach it strategically. Now, people like to talk a lot about strategy. And there are times that we have to have a little bit of practical strategy. But the real meat of the strategy is already there. We don't have to reinvent the wheel because God's already given it to us. He says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Here it is. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. Now, wait a minute. There is something that's not said right there, but it's clearly understood. He's talking about application on purpose. Reprove whom? Rebuke whom? Exhort whom? He's talking about preaching it to people. You're preaching the word. And in this context with the church, he's thinking predominantly about believers. that the Word of God is preached not so you can win Bible trivia. By the way, if you haven't played the old Bible trivia game lately, it's good to play it and use the advanced questions. It'll humble you in about two seconds. We don't preach the word so we get factoids that we bury in the back of our minds. We preach and teach and read the word so that we will do what it says. And notice how much this has to do with correction and direction. You reprove them. You give them a gentle correction. You rebuke them. That means you drop the hammer. You exhort them, you point them. Not only do you tell them what not to do, you tell them what they should do. But notice what he says here. Those are the goals of preaching, but here's the methodology with great patience. One of the things I lacked in a greater way than I ever realized, I lacked patience as a pastor. I thought that if you can understand this is what God says to do, by next month, y'all ought to all be doing it. And then I look at the guy that I shave with and realize there's some things God's had to remind me of over and over. He's had to take me to the woodshed more than once over certain things. It takes great patience to realize that when you're declaring the word of God, some people do get it the very first time. Some people get it the 10th time. Some people, you'll be at death's door wondering if they will ever get it. And yet, one of the things that a shepherd has to have is patience. He's got to care for the sheep more than he cares for their report card. Otherwise, the shepherd would just go stand at the gate Shotgun in hand and every time a sheep got out of line. You just start shooting Pretty soon you'd have a field full of dead sheep and a shepherd standing by himself Imagine imagine Jesus if he had taken that approach with the disciples it would have been a solo ministry very very quickly because they said and did a lot of dumb things and You do it not only with patience, but with instruction, with doctrine. Doctrine is not a dirty word. In fact, all doctrine means is teaching. And yet I've heard people say horrendous statements like, I don't care about doctrine. I just want to worship Jesus. Well, which Jesus? There's lots of variations out there. What's worship? Where are you going to get a correct idea of what worship is? Those are all doctrinal issues. The doctrine of worship, the doctrine of Christ, who it is that we're worshiping, what actually worshipers do him. Those are all doctrines we preach. And people will say this, well, you know, he was a whole lot more of a teacher than a preacher. A lot of times that means that he didn't, as a friend of mine used to say, didn't clear off a spot and have a fit. That it was not a sermon boiling over with all types of charisma and stomping and snorting and all that kind of thing. And there was a time when I loved that kind of preaching. And I still don't don't mind it if it's got good content. But what I realized was I was entertained by that. That I liked the theatrics of the preacher more than I did the content of the preaching. It can have great charisma in the presentation, but we're not hanging on the presentation. We're hanging on to the truth. Thank you, brother. Well, this leads us just to two more parts, or excuse me, one more part, that when we preach it strategically, anticipate the conflict. We've already touched on this a little bit. He says, for the time will come, verse three, when they will not endure sound doctrine. The term for sound is that which is healthy, that which is strong. It's a medical term. And if you don't have sound doctrine, you have rotten doctrine. You have decaying doctrine. They won't endure sound doctrine. So instead, what does he say? Wanting to have their ears tickled, They will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires. My dad used to say the hogs always like to have their backs scratched. Let me tell you something. Rebels love to have their ears tickled. And what he's saying here is that when people don't want to hear the truth, they'll find somebody who will tell them a lie. If you don't believe it, just go home and turn on the religious programming of your television. The vast majority of what you hear on most of those networks are people who are as successful as they are because of the ears that they tickle. And he's telling Timothy this not just as a fact he needs to be aware of. So that he'll understand that that's the conflict. It's the truth versus every form of falsehood that can come down the pike. And he goes on to say in verse four, but will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. If you watch the TV, if you read the news and you wonder how in the world in the last 15 years has American society gotten to the point that they don't seem to understand the difference between male and female. If somebody had told me that when I was a teenager, I would have thought, oh, you're crazy. Now, sure, there were people back then who believed that, but to actually try to codify it as some type of cultural truth? And the reason is because rebels like a myth more than they like the truth. Because a myth says, hey, you don't need to change anything. Hey, you're good just the way you are. Even the incomplete statement that says Jesus loves you just the way you are is a misleading statement. Because you didn't follow that up with another statement. Jesus may love you the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you the way you are. There was a man said many years ago, in fact it was his, he was a key leader in a particular church that I was familiar with, and it was his daughter, whose husband, a deacon in the church, he had left her to go cheat with another woman. And the pastor was trying to address that with church discipline. And the father of the jilted woman said, well, I just believe the church is a hospital for sinners. Which is his way of saying, hey, we've all got flaws. There's nothing we need to do. And I would love to have had the opportunity to say, you know. You are you are right in the sense the church is a hospital for sinners, but it's not a nursing home for sinners. You see, the Word of God will meet you in your hospital situation. The Word of God meets us as broken people in a spiritually ambulatory situation. But He does not come to us and say, hey, I understand. By the way, it's the 21st century. No. The Word of God says you're a broken sinner. You're a rebel toward God. You are a lover of self. And here is the way for all of that to be fixed. You see, the sad truth, a nursing home is designed for people typically who do not have the ability to get better. It gives them a safe place to be for the remainder of their days. That's not the purpose of a hospital. The hospital brings you in, sees you to healing and puts you on the road to recovery. No wonder that Paul said people will turn aside their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. So it's not enough just to know it. Expect it and realize this. This is the last piece I'm going to share with you. I heard a pastor say many years ago, he came to a pastor fellowship that we did. He pastored a church that ran 2,000 in Sunday school. If anybody was, quote, too busy to be there, he was. And yet he was typically always there. And one of the things that Roger Freeman told us was this. He said, the one thing that God has promised to always bless is his word. You think about that. We've got to get to that principle of sola scriptura and stand on it, because that's the one thing that God said He's always going to bless. He's not always going to bless my efforts. He's not always going to bless our ministry. He's not even always going to bless the existence of a church. Go back and read about the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus says, if you do not do this, I will take away your lampstand. What does that mean? He said, I'm going to shut you down. You don't have to worry why that church closed. Jesus closed it. He hasn't promised to bless that, but He has promised to bless the declaration of His Word. So friend, as you begin to think of how you're going to do ministry for the remainder of this year, as you head into the holiday season, You think about how you want to start off 2025. Everything you do. Needs to be rooted and grounded in the Word of God. Because if not, you've rooted and grounded it in something that's temporal. It's cotton candy. Sweet and enjoyable for a very short time. And can I tell you something? Although there are churches gathered right now that are having some wild emotional experiences, but if you get a phone call tomorrow morning that says that your father has died, that emotional experience is going to do nothing to hold you up. But if you've been fed the Word of God, if you've been feeding yourself the Word of God day by day, When the bottom falls out, the word of God will always be there to catch you. Your word, the psalmist says, have I hid in my heart that I may not sin against God. Father, thank you for the great privilege of declaring your word. Thank you that by your grace, we have the opportunity to know you through your word and to live according to your word. God, we pray that you'd give us grace to read it, to understand it and to live by it. Oh, God, may we do that fearfully. Lord, may we may we do it. With great intention, in spite of the circumstances, may we do it strategically. until we see Jesus face to face. For it's in His name we pray.