1 Kings 17, and the 17th verse. Hear the word of the Lord. 1 Kings 17, beginning in the 17th verse. And it came to pass after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick. And his sickness was so sore that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, what have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? And he said unto her, give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom and carried him into a loft where he abode and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourned by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came into him again and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the chamber into the house and delivered him unto his mother. And Elijah said, see thy son liveth. And the woman said unto Elijah, now by this, I know that thou art a man of God and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is true. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this hour that we can look into the resurrection of this widow's son. We thank you for the gospel that we have in this passage. We thank you for the beauty of it. We thank you for the truth of it. We thank you that your word abides in our hearts and it abides even throughout eternity. And we pray that as we look into these things, that it would be to your exaltation, to your glory, that you would be high and lifted up. that it would reprove and rebuke and convict us of our sin as it convicted this widow and that we would look to Christ and live. We thank you for this in the name of your son, Jesus, the king. Amen. Well, today we continue to consider the life of Elijah that we began a few months ago now. And the last time we looked at this, we were looking at the entrance of Elijah to Zarephath. And we saw last time that the brook that he was staying at in Cherith had dried up. And God had sent him on this long and dusty journey to the entrance at Zarephath to a city of Sidon. We saw that this was deep in Canaanite territory, and we saw that God had prepared this widow to receive Elijah. And this widow is a picture of how every child of grace encounters the gospel. She does so unexpectedly. She's gathering the sticks of death. And Elijah found her in this manner at the gate, and she was cooking a final meal to feed herself and her son. And he requested her to fetch him some water. And while she went to bring it, he was asking her to bring him a morsel of bread as well. And she had told him that she didn't have any such food for him. She had no provisions left. And Elijah responds by telling her to go forward with the preparations that she had had to make this final meal. But he gave one important stipulation. He told her to give him the first fruits of that meal. And he swore that as the Lord God lived, that in obedience to this command, that her bread and her oil would not wear out. This was a test of the widow's faith. And we see the dilemma that this placed the widow in, as she might ponder whether to spend a portion of this last meal with this strange prophet. If he were telling falsehoods, then, well, she and her son wouldn't let you have enough for your final meal. But if what he was saying was true, then there was hope, not just for this final meal, but for as many meals as she would require until rain and bread returned to the land. Well, whatever internal struggle might have occurred for her, the Holy Spirit granted this woman to believe the word of God spoken by the mouth of his prophet Elijah. God made her willing to do as Elijah said. And as she went about her preparation for Elijah, a strange and miraculous thing occurred. She couldn't get to the bottom of the barrel of flour. She could not empty her jar of oil. It just kept coming. It did not and it would not run out. The word of the Lord came to pass just as he said it would. And we noted that this was an archetype of the miraculous power of God's effectual calling. We saw that the bread in that barrel was a type of Christ who is the bread of life. The oil in the jug was a prefiguring of the Holy Spirit who applies the bread of life to our hearts and illuminates and sustains. Just as this widow could not sound the depths of the barrel of flour and the jug of oil, so likewise we cannot sound the depths of Christ, the bread of life and the Holy Spirit who applies his salvation to our hearts. And we saw that the widow in her house ate many days. This life-giving food failed not. And we observe that this historic account that we read about here, a thing that actually happened in an actual place, It was foundationed on the cross of Christ Jesus. It testifies of him who would one day be made flesh and dwell among us and die as a ransom for many, including for this widow. We noted that if Christ had not come, then nothing about this story would make any sense. We noted that if Christ crucified is that foundation that allows us to savor the flavor of Elijah's gracious ministry at Zarephath. And so then we ask the question, well, who are you worshipping? Are you worshipping Yahweh, this bountiful God of grace? Does the one you worship resemble the true and the living God as revealed in scripture? He is compassionate and gracious. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in loving kindness and truth. This is our God. We warned against the danger of wishing that God weren't quite so gracious. of wishing that the cruel Baal was God rather than Yahweh. We noted that during Jonah's ministry, he fell into the sin and it greatly impeded his peace and joy in the Lord. Jonah resented the fact that the Lord was not willing that any should perish in Nineveh and that he had no delight in the death of the wicked. If you scorn this God of grace in your heart, if you reject him, he will pass you by. This is exactly what Jesus said happened to Israel during the times of Elijah. I want us to turn briefly to Luke chapter four. I want to see what Jesus had to say about the nation of Israel during the times of Elijah. Luke chapter four, beginning in verse 25. It says this, I tell you of a truth. Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, it's Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. Elijah passed by many widows in Israel to go to Canaan. Do not presume on Christ's presence. Do not think that he owes you grace. Presumption of Christ is rejection of Christ. Seek out Christ earnestly and plead for his pardon of your debt. As Christians, we're called to make this petition daily. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Christ delights to show benevolence to those who humble themselves and who come to him in penitence. Turning back to 1 Kings 17, we come now today to the second half of Elijah's stay at Zarephath. Elijah is not yet done at Zarephath. This widow's trust in God and in his word had not yet been fully secured and tested. She had demonstrated her faith in providing for Elijah, but God had a deeper trial for her. He intended to put her through something that was for her benefit as well as for Elijah's. And this section begins right away with the stark providence that occurred. Let's read verse 17 again. And it came to pass, after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick. And his sickness was so sore that there was no breath left in him. Now this death seems to have occurred suddenly on her. It could have been respiratory in nature. It says that there was no breath left in him. Well, regardless of how it came about, his final gasps for breath ended in the stillness of death. And it happened so quickly, it doesn't seem that the widow had time to bring him to Elijah before he met his tragic end. You see here that even though her son had been sustained by the flour and oil, yet he died. It could be said of him what Jesus said of the Israelites in the wilderness. In John six, he says, your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. We see the response that the widow has to this in verse 18. She said unto Elijah, what have I to do with thee? O thou man of God, art thou come unto me to call my sins remembrance and to slay my son. Before we enter into this, we want to recognize something that is implicit here in the text, but it must be recognized in our day. This woman had lost a child whom she dearly loved. She had not, as so many in our generation, put a premium on childlessness. There was nothing greater desired than children in that day, even in pagan Zarephath. And so it is with all those who have God's common grace. It's interesting that we do not read of any of God's people in scripture who were deliberately fruitless and childless in their covenant unions, but we do read of many barren couples who pleaded with God for children. We live in an evil and an adulterous generation in which mothers and fathers do not love their children, but they rather seek to murder them. This woman lamented the death of her child. This is the only sensical response to the loss of her son. Notice how the widow lost her composure when she comes to Eliza in verse 18. We sense this tone of duress in that. She said unto Elijah, what have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? This is noteworthy when the widow had first encountered Elijah, she had resigned herself at that point already to her fate, to the death of herself and her son. Notice how she had said it then in verse 12. She said, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die. Well, death by starvation would have been a slow and a painful, a drawn out process. And she had calmly told Elijah that that was what was going to befall them. She had mentally prepared for that death. And yet once the hope of life was once restored, she had forgotten that time of woe. All was well. But now here in a matter of moments, the life of her son was departed. She hadn't anticipated it. She hadn't expected it. And this is an insight into human nature. It's one thing when we endure a hardship with advanced notice. It's another thing to endure trials with patience when they come on us suddenly and unexpectedly. When things are going well for us, it is tempting for us to overestimate our spiritual progress. It often pleases God in those cases to send along a sudden calamity such as this one to reveal us how much growth we still have in our trust, faith, and endurance. Few examples that we could relate to in modern days. What happens when the electricity goes out or our internet or our water, or maybe our car suddenly breaks down and we're beside ourselves. What do we do? And this is, this is a very humbling insight into ourselves. It's in those times that God tests us to see if we've misplaced our affections from the immovable riches of our inheritance with Christ and transferred those affections to the world and the things of the world. Well, may God wean us from this. As Paul wrote in Colossians, set your affections on things above, not on the things on the earth. For you're dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Well, that's a good and necessary application from this text, but there's something else going on here as well. There's a deep spiritual crisis that is happening in this passage. And again, we want to note that duress that she has in verse 18. What have I to do with thee? O thou man of God. And notice that the widow is recognizing the spiritual nature of this occurrence. She acknowledges, if you notice there, a connection between her son's death and the fact that the man of God was under her roof. This wasn't a health crisis for her. This is a spiritual crisis. It was a God crisis. What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Brothers and sisters, death is a spiritual matter. It is not, as the world tries to tell us, simply fizzing bags of evolved chemicals just naturally transferring from one state to another. Death is not normal. It's not natural. It was not intended to occur. Our bodies were not designed to die after 70 or 80 years. The fact that they do, the fact that this happens tells us something is very, very wrong. The world tries to normalize death. They say it's a natural end to life and it should be followed with a celebration of life. The notion that death is natural comes from the world, the world that is blinded by the God of this world. The creation has been in a strange, twisted, unnatural condition since Eden, and death is the climax of that abnormality. Death points to a problem, as this widow recognized, that is spiritual in nature. What is more is we notice that she did not find fault with Elijah as the primary source of her woe. but rather she viewed him as simply the agent for uncovering the real source of her condition, which was her sin. She says, art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? Notice what she did not say. She did not say, Elijah, you have treated me unjustly. I didn't deserve this. I didn't do anything that warranted this. I haven't been that bad. I can't believe in a God who would do this to me. God mistreated me. I refuse to believe in a God that would have done something like this to me. She recognizes that Elijah's God is behind this, but she does not fault Elijah's God with injustice. She knew that she was a sinner. She had a shattered conscience of a daughter of Adam. She had the memory of past sin that haunted her. Child has a way of bringing the memory of sin to its parent. How much more in that child's death? There's something about when a thing finishes, causes us to reflect in vivid clarity, the things that transpired before that. It's like the whole matter flashes before our eyes, certain memories, certain things that happened, and it's all over. It's irrevocably past. For this widow, the death of her son brought to her mind specific sins in her life, in stark relief. We see here that she can remember her sin as clearly as if she had just done it. It didn't matter if her sin had happened in the past. Perhaps it had happened a long time ago. We don't know. Maybe many years ago. But it all comes crashing home here now. It's fresh on her mind and now it's tormenting her. The death of her son was proof that that sin that she had committed in the past was real. The death of her son was proof that God had not forgotten. It was as if she could see herself dead beside her son and then standing before the judgment seat of God, condemned. The dead child in her arms marked the finality of that court of law. There was no going back. There was no getting out of that court. She could hear the judge's gavel coming down on the sounding block and his pronouncement, guilty, worthy of death. And the judge declaring the terms of that sentence confined to outer darkness until she paid the last quadrants. She would not be let out until her debt was paid in full. And she knew that she could not pay the smallest copper coin of that debt. There was nothing left but weeping and gnashing of teeth. She could feel the judge's officers taking her by the arms and casting her into that place of torment. It was as though it was already done in her mind. Elijah's presence was simply speeding up what was already going to happen anyway. Her words here are an eerie echo of what we read the demons asking Jesus in Matthew 8. They said, what have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? It was sooner than we were expecting. This widow had sin that she had not dealt with. She had been putting it off. There would be a more convenient season, she kept telling herself. She had gotten out of many bad scrapes in the past, most recently this famine, and somehow when God came to collect his debt, she would find a way to negotiate. That was the lie that she kept telling herself. But those delusions were shattered with the death of her son. That dream was all over now. Every single child of Adam alive today on this earth secretly knows, though they say that they don't believe it, they know in the back of their minds there's a day of judgment. But they lie to themselves that it's far off and somehow they'll come up with the money for that debt that they owe God for their sin. And some of you come here every Sunday and we remind you of the bill that you owe God. Every time the word is preached, it's as though we print a fresh copy of that bill and we place it before you. And you smile and politely take that bill home and you set it on your desk. And during the week it gets buried under a pile of lesser papers. And you keep telling yourself the lie that this bill is something that you'll negotiate sometime in the future. Maybe by then it'll expire. Any God will forget. He won't bring it to remembrance. But see, that's a misunderstanding. This bill is, it's not something in the future. This bill is a debt you already owe. Your payment is past due. The collection agency is already on their way. The repossession team is already driving to your house as we speak. There's already a warrant for your arrest. The constable's already on his way. You see, God is a God who visits iniquity. You do not know when his angel will arrive to your threshold with his death sickle, but it could be any hour of any day. You do not have an endless number of tomorrows. Your eternity is in jeopardy every hour. That doorbell will ring at any time. And even though you may be young and healthy, you may soon succumb to a sickness so sore that there is no breath left in you, as this widow saw happen to her son. That's why we urge you today, right now, to confess your sins to Christ, to turn from your evil ways and live. He offers you a check for the full amount of your debt. He forged this check with his blood at Golgotha. When you look to him in repentance and faith, he cancels the arrest warrant. He calls off the constable. He pays your debt. He clears your title. He forgives you freely. You no longer owe the king. Well, this was the widow's spiritual crisis. Her conscience, that she had somehow managed to quiet, was revived and renewed afresh. She was guilty and she knew it. And she's acknowledging here that the wages of sin is death. She deserved for her son to die. The death of her child was the just outcome of her sin. She knew that she was incompatible with the holy God of whom Elijah was an ambassador. The widow knew that in the same way that the drought had come upon the land of Israel because of their sin, that so her loss was the result of her sin. We have here a clear picture in scripture of a person with a guilty conscience under divine conviction, a person whose conscience is guilty for the right reasons, because of her sin, and standing in the presence of God, who is sinless. This widow's response reminds us of Isaiah, who caught a vision of the glory of God in Isaiah 6, and he says, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the king, Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. I think this also reminds us of Simon Peter in Luke 5, where he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? The widow recognized that in her sinful state, her closeness to God and to the prophet of God could only result in her household being consumed. And this vexed her to her core as it did with Isaiah and Peter. The death of her son drove home to her the weight of her sin, the seriousness of it, and the magnitude of the penalty for it. Matthew Henry says, our sins are the death of our children. This shows the widow the seriousness of her sin in a way that she had never quite seen before. Never had her conscience been tormented like it was now. And it was too late. Her son was gone. The regret of sin that she could not uncommit weighed her down to despair. Like David, her sin was ever before her. Let's read Elijah's response in verse 19. And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom and carried him into a loft where he abode and laid him upon his own bed. Well, we noticed that Elijah did not lash out at the widow. He didn't respond to her in kind in the same way that she had addressed him. Instead, he asked her to give him her dead son. He took him from her arms and he brings him up into this upper chamber that it speaks of where he lodged. And then let's read verse 20. He says, he cried unto the Lord and said, Oh Lord, my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn by slaying her son? Well, Elijah pleaded his case with God. He did this in the form of a question, but notice that he doesn't ask why. I can't improve on how John Gill states this. He says, Elijah observes the character and condition of the woman, a widow, such as the Lord has a compassionate regard for. And he urges the kindness of her to him with whom he had sojourned so long and seems to represent the case as an additional evil or affliction to him as well as the widow. Well, in verse 21, we read that he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried unto the Lord and said, oh Lord, my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. Well, Elijah's response to the widow and then his prayer to God were great exercises of his faith. In this prayer, Elijah was praying for something that had never been done so far as we know in scripture. He was praying for this child's soul to enter into him again. He was praying for the child to be resurrected. And then it says that he stretched himself upon the child three times. And it's as though Elijah were seeking to impart his own warmth and the breath of his own body into that of this child. Elijah was not content to seek this resurrection from a distance. He was not aloof from the task of bringing life to the dead. He himself became as this little child, He brought himself to the same level as the child to whom he ministered. And this is a picture of how God imparts spiritual life. He doesn't resurrect his people from afar. Rather, he stoops down and he enters into them and he raises them up unto newness of life from within. In verse 22, we read this, and the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came into him again And he revived. We see that God answers the prayer of Elijah. He delights to answer the prayers of his children. In the words of James, he says, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Well, can you imagine what it must have been like to witness this? This is the first resurrection that we read of in scripture. It's a foreshadowing of the resurrection of the Christ in so many ways. We'll look at it soon. This first resurrection given to us in scripture is an act of faith and fervent prayer by the prophet whose name is my God is Yah. This was real power. This was the power of God. I want us to notice how scripture describes this process of this resurrection. If physical death is first and foremost, the soul departing from the body, then being raised to life is the soul returning to the body. In other words, resurrection is not primarily a physical issue. It's a spiritual issue. When the soul returns to the body, the person revives. That's the cause and the effect that's given to us in verse 22. Let me read verse 23. And Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the chamber into the house and delivered him unto his mother. And Elijah said, see thy son liveth. Elijah brought the widow's son down from the upper chamber into the main part of this house. And it seems that she's struggling to believe that this is really her son that's alive. In the same way that Jesus had to belabor to his disciples, that it was really him that was risen. So likewise, Elijah says, see, and you could almost say it is thy son that liveth. God's restoration of this son granted freely by the might of his power was almost too good to be true. But the widow is at last convinced it was indeed her very own son that Elijah presented to her. And so she says in verse 24, The widow said to Elijah, now by this I know that thou art a man of God and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth. And this is a fulfillment of Hebrews chapter 11, verse 35. We mentioned this in briefing last time, but let's turn to Hebrews 11. Start reading in 32nd verse. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 32. And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in might, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. The two instances we think of in the Old Testament in which there were women that received their dead raised to life again are this widow at Zarephath and the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4. And this faith that's spoken of in Hebrews 11, it certainly would have involved Elijah's faith, but it also seems to be talking of the widow's as well. Her very giving of her son to Elijah was itself an act of belief that Elijah could intercede and restore him. In the words of A.W. Pink, he says, the widow of Zarephath, though a Gentile, was a daughter of Sarah, to whom had been committed the faith of God's elect. It's not exactly clear when this widow would have become a true follower of the God of Israel, but certainly by the end of 1 Kings 17, there is no mistake. She had become a grateful and fervent believer in Yahweh. The word of God was tested and true. That's what she says. I know that thou art a man of God and the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth. And the widow, by the end of this chapter, she's surrounded with the attestation of this now. When she went to her bottomless barrel of flour and made dinner that night for her son, who was dead and now was alive, as she watched her miraculous son eat that miraculous food, what expressions of praise and gratitude must have been upon her heart and tongue. Truly her sins, which were many, were forgiven, for she loved much. The resurrection of her son was proof to this widow that God had pardoned her sin. He would remember it no more. She was no longer condemned because she put her faith and her trust in him. And the widow has this gratitude to God by the end of the chapter that she did not have prior to experiencing the loss of her son. The death of her son was her just dessert. The restoration of her son was God's free grace and a sign of his forgiving love. Notice in this woman's confession that she does not even make any mention of Baal. He's a no-god. It's as though the widow put Baal in the rearview mirror and refused to even make a reference to him, even though he was the purported god of her land. He was the god promoted by her earthly king, Ethbaal. And the implication here is that if the word of the Lord in Elijah's mouth is truth, as she testifies here in verse 24, then the implication is that the competing word of Baal is falsehood. We do not read any more of the widow after this chapter. We don't know the details of the life of her and her son after Elijah departs and goes to Samaria, as we'll see next time. But we can safely believe that after Elijah departed, that she walked with the Lord all her days, even in this dark land of Zarephath. What we have in this passage here, God revealing who he is. Behold the works of God. You see, in the same way that God visited this woman's iniquity by slaying her son, it's in that same way that God calls our sin to remembrance by slaying his son. And the resurrection that we see here is a foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ. It's interesting that this woman's only son is raised from the dead after three stretches. And in the same way, the only begotten son of God was raised on the third day. As he told the Pharisees in John chapter 10, I lay down my life that I might take it again. Christ is the fountain of life. He says in John 8, Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. Or in John chapter 11, at the resurrection of Lazarus, he says, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? Well, as we close on this passage, I want to say this to the lost. If you do not know the forgiveness of sins, if you have not had your guilt removed, do not neglect these divinely issued bills of debt that we bring before you week by week. There is still hope for you. It is not yet too late. Confess, as this widow did, that the word of the Lord is truth. Come to Christ and have your debt paid. Live in Christ, believe in Christ. If you do this, then according to Christ's word, you will never die. He says, whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? Make haste to believe in him now. Do not trifle with the warrant for your arrest. Make reconciliation with your adversary. flee to Christ. And to the saved, I say this, on the other side of eternity, you will view your life very differently than you do at present. For now we see through a glass darkly and our flesh constantly nags us to set our minds on things below rather than on things above. You know, we just wound our clocks backwards last night and I want to recommend that we wind the clocks forward every single day to the very end of our life, to the day of judgment. If you know the forgiveness of sins, then today I want you to listen to that gavel hitting the sounding block and the judge of all the earth pronouncing, not guilty. See Christ coming forward and producing his pierced hands as the evidence of your pardon. and hear the accuser say, no further questions, your honor. That vindication is yours now. No condemnation. There is a day coming when we will begin to grasp the immensity of the debt of love that we owe God. I want to close with the words of Robert Murray McShane. He says, when I hear the wicked call, on the rocks and hills to fall. When I see them start and shrink on the fiery deluge brink, then, Lord, shall I fully know, not till then, how much I owe. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this resurrection of the widow's son in Zarephath. And Lord, even though there were likely only three people present when this occurred, yet we recognize the depth and the beauty of this and how this word has gone out to all the nations and to all the tongues of the nations. And we are here today remembering what happened. because it's a foretaste of the resurrection of Christ, of you bringing to remembrance our sin by slaying your son, by visiting iniquity, but in the process of that, of pardoning us, of forgiving us of our sins. Lord, we pray for those here today who take those bills of debt and who bury them and let them gather dust and who think that they'll negotiate them. Lord, if it takes a crisis in their life, to bring them to terms with their sin. We pray that you would do what it takes to grab their attention, to show them that this bill is past due, that if they don't pay it, the doorbell could ring any minute, the constable could handcuff them, and there is no getting out until the last penny is paid. And they cannot even begin to pay that debt. Lord, I pray that all here in this place would look to Christ afresh and live in the shadow of the cross, Lord, may our worship to you be sweet. May it come from a heart of true gratitude and teach us by further steps in this life and in the ages to come the debt of love that we owe you. We pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen.