Okay. Okay, we're looking at lesson number eight here today. Faithfulness and history. Okay. Yeah, Mark. I'm sorry. What was that last part? Oh, oh, great. Everybody's trying to get in the house after her. So she goes up and down. She's together, and then she's not. They still think that's that liver deal, or they don't know? As far as I understand it, yes. That's what they said that they thought the problem is. And I don't remember their explanation, but either way. Yeah. Okay, all right. huge amount of struggles and then got Yeah, I think I sent something out on but it was another two-year-old I'm sure it wasn't that one Okay All right Yeah, I was going to say Maryland. We're praying for Maryland, Michelle. My parents are probably leaving for Florida, if not the 31st, definitely the 1st, driving down to Florida. OK. They get their new car fixed again, or? No. They used to have something coming for insurance, but now it's if and when they can get it repaired. Yeah, my new car get hit a deer After you total the other one so Wow, okay, so they got to something else to drive in her. Oh Oh Dinged up Oh, yeah Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. We think that would be a slower day. I don't know. Chicago, it's always bad. And you guys are heading back to go west, young man? Thursday. Thursday, OK. Everybody's leaving us. OK. All right, well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the day you've given us. Thank you for hearing and answering our prayers and the way that you've watched over and cared for church family, loved ones here recently with all the travel involved and operations and so on. We thank you for bringing Lucy through the thyroid surgery on Friday and Allie through her tonsil removal on last week, here a week ago. And we just pray you'll continue to give the folks safety as they're traveling back home, back to Wyoming and to Michigan for Michelle's parents as they travel back to Florida. Pray you give them journey mercies, safety along the way. Help them be able to get their car fixed here before long. Thank you for the job you've provided for Christy in a lawyer's office right down her alley there. I pray you'd continue to meet needs in his sister, Mark's sister Sue's life with these Hallucinations, I don't know if that what the doctors can do to to help with that There's something that they could be of help with the liver issues that she'd be able to think straight and Mark be able to talk to her about the Lord Thank you for the opportunities had to talk to this Diane and a waiter about the Lord Thank you for the way you Helped out in Christie's life And We we pray that you'd guide us in our lesson here today that we Again, learn truths that we can apply to our day-to-day lives We thank you for it now in Jesus name. Amen Okay We're looking at lesson number eight faithfulness and history looking at 2nd Timothy chapter 2 1, verse 9 and following. Key verse for the day is verse 12. For the witch cause I also suffer these things. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed. For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He's able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day. Again, we're talking about faithfulness. I mean, that's kind of the theme of this whole series of studies. And they talk about faithfulness. They found this story. Actually, there's a bit longer version. They give the internet link to it, if that's anything you want to read more about. The lady's name was Betsy Chalmers, Richmond, Virginia. She believes in faithfulness. She says, I met him when I was 19, married him when I was 20. We were separated when I turned 22 because he was arrested for and then convicted of a violent crime. I stayed through the weeks of the trials, years in jail, and decades in prison. I'm now 50. He's 55. He's still my husband and my best friend. I see him four hours every weekend, and I talk to him on the phone twice a week for 20 minutes. I am not deceived or a martyr. I'm not stupid, uneducated, or desperate. I'm a wife. She believes that when you say, till death us do part, and stuck with it, even though it wasn't a picnic for the last, what, close to 30 years, she's visiting him in prison. And the rest of that story goes on to tell a bit more about her life. Be tough, you know, you're looking around seeing other people's families get together, things that she's missed out on, you know, no children, no family get togethers, things like that, but faithfulness. And so we see this, though, also in a couple of people. We touched on this here the last time with Paul and Timothy. and their faithfulness to the Lord. And we look at them again here with some additions and subtractions. Some faithful, some not so much. But, and we'll try to explain that as we go along here, but look here in 2 Timothy chapter one, verse nine and 10, it says, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given unto us in Christ Jesus before the world began. and is now made manifest, or made known, by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, who hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." And so, you know, a great example Best example of faithfulness is that of the Lord himself. He makes promises and he follows through with it. He's not coming to us with an appendix, here's the excuses I use if things don't work out. But no, he planned out the matter of salvation before this world began. And he says, you know, he's saved us. He's provided the salvation that's available to all who believe. But then he goes on to say, you know, it's not like, okay, I got my fire insurance. I can just kind of coast on in from here. He says, he's called us with a holy calling. Scripture tells us elsewhere that we are to be holy. Why? Anybody remember that verse? I can't hear that far. Because he is holy, right. You know, what is it, Romans 8, you know, we all know 828, but we ought to read on into 29 that talks about us being conformed to the image of Christ. He wants us to be like Christ. Well, one of the qualities about Christ is holiness. Now, are we ever going to reach complete holiness this side of heaven? No. But we will on the other side. All right. But it's because, well, we can't reach it that we don't even try. No. God wants us to be aiming in that direction. And, you know, if there was some kind of a graph, I guess a graph is always Going the wrong way for you guys, but you know, there ought to be some upward growth in our holiness, in our likeness towards the Lord. Not just simply growing older or growing older in the faith, but making some progress to be like Christ. And again, he's planned this out in eternity past. And he makes, you know, again, clear, that it's not according to our works. It's not us getting a checklist, checking it once and twice, and seeing if we are doing all the things that we're supposed to do. What else is involved besides just simply doing the right thing? That's all right, I'm fishing. Were some of the Sadducees, Pharisees, were they doing some of the right things? Yeah. OK. All right. I'm sorry it's not part of the lesson here, but we need to do the right things, but we also need to do it with the right attitude, the right motivation. Lord looks at that. He's looking at the heart. Why are we doing it? Are we doing it for the praise of man? Or are we doing it to please the Lord? Well, they were, you know, tithing all the way down to, you know, carrot sticks in the garden. But yet, you know, and Bible talks about that, you know, they're, they say this stuff with their lips, but he, God's not just simply listening to what we say. He says, but their heart. is far from him. And so God's looking at our heart, you know, what's motivating us to do what we do? And so, but it says here, you know, again, God's planned out salvation in eternity past, and it's by his grace. It's not anything we you know, done such a great job, you know, we get a reward, you know, okay, you've earned salvation, you've earned eternal life. No, there's nothing we can do to earn this. It's simply by God's grace that he gives it to us, not something we can work for. You know, again, eternity passed, God decided that he was gonna save people. And the thing is, he had this all figured out. And yet, was God surprised when Adam and Eve ate of the tree? He goes, oh man, that's not the way I want it to work out. No, God knew that. He knew what they were going to do. And he provided the skins of the animals and the sacrifice and everything to provide cleansing and so on, a sacrificial system. And ultimately, way down the road was that of Calvary and Christ coming to provide salvation for all. It was all in God's mind from whatever day one was. But again, he's established his purposes. You know, it talks about who has saved us, called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His purpose, okay? And grace, God's got a plan, He's got a purpose. Again, that's, I don't have a verse to say that God's got a blueprint for our life, but that's kind of the way I look at it. God's got a plan and a purpose for each and every one of us. You know, and it's kind of our responsibility to find out what it is and do it, okay? And so his grace, it's talked a little bit about back in the Old Testament. We think of the Old Testament as law, but God demonstrated grace here and there, but it was more fully known and understood by us when Christ came and was born into this world and ultimately went to the cross, provided salvation for us, He says there in verse 10, it was now made manifest, okay? Oftentimes they talk about in the Old Testament, there are things that are a mystery, it's kind of hid, but in the New Testament, it's revealed and we understand it better. Well, now it's made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ. It says he abolished death. Is death still around? Yeah, it is. So how's death any different? Well, I mean, it's still there, but it doesn't, well, okay, in a similar way, it's kind of like sin. Sin's still around, isn't it? We still have the capability of sinning. But Christ put to death Satan's power. He broke his power, if you will. We, as a believer, we still can sin. We have the potential to do it. We can choose to sin, but he can't make us sin anymore. If we sin now, it's because we choose to do so. When we were an unbeliever, we didn't really have any choice in the matter. We just did what he told us to do. But he broke the power of Satan over us. Death is still around, but it's a different type. Now it talks about the believer who dies. It refers to him as what? Sleeping. We're going to awaken. We're going to pop out of that grave one of these days. So yeah, it's changed. You know, Paul talked about death, that it was... Okay, let me see if I can... Find the verse here. Remember when he was straight betwixt two, desire to depart, and yet he needed to stay around for some things too. But he said it was far better if he could go to be with the Lord. Well, he's writing this, this is his last book, and he knows death is pretty much imminent for him. He's been in prison and out and in and out several times, but this time it doesn't look like there's an exit. Even though he faced imminent death, he's not afraid of it because he knows the Lord and he knows what's ahead of him. You know, God didn't have to tell us everything he told us. He could have left death just like this big dark hole that is for a lot of unsaved people that don't know anything about the Bible. You know, because for their own kind of sanity, a lot of them don't believe that there's a hell because they don't want to end up there. And if you don't think, if you don't believe it, well, it won't be there. That doesn't change anything, doesn't matter. But we see here, God, again, had plans. He had purposes for this world. And He's faithful to us. He made promises to us. Back in, let's see what we got here. Matthew 5, 18 says, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." So he's not coming in and rewriting history like historians do today. It was written down right. And then in Malachi 3.6, it talks about, I am the Lord, I change not. You've met people. I know I have. There are probably times in my own life it's that way, but you think, okay, which person am I going to get? You know, sometimes they're up, sometimes they're down. You don't know which one you're going to get. Some are happy, some are sad, and so on. God's always the same, you know? He's just kind of level there, all right? We can count on him. We don't, you know, it's kind of like, well, at Christmas. Or maybe it's you wanting some money from dad or whoever's holding the purse strings, you know? You got to catch them when they're in a good mood. Well, we don't have to. Catch God when he's in good mood to ask him for something, all right? He's always willing to listen to us. Well, we see example here with Paul. He talked about what was required of stewards elsewhere, but he says, what's required of stewards? That we be successful, be popular, be famous. faithful. That's required of us. That's what the Lord's looking for. And Paul's a good example of this, of what we ought to do. We see the Lord called him. You know, his was unique from the other apostles there on the Damascus Road, but he ended up being a preacher. He shared the gospel with people. He was an apostle, told people about the resurrection of Christ, could attest to it himself. He was a teacher. He tried to instruct people in God's word. And what do you think? Is there some kind of a line of apostles You know, if you got it in your DNA or you're in the right family, you know that it's kind of passed on down? No. Do we have apostles? Are there apostles today? No. Say no. You may have churches, and I've seen there's some in the area, something apostolic church. Now, I could be wrong on this, but my take, my exposure to it anyway has been, back away because most time they think they got a corner on some particular truth. that nobody else has. And I ran into this a long, long time ago when we were in Minnesota. A preacher came in and wanted to know if they could use our baptistry, because they were in a little town, didn't have a meeting somewhere, didn't have a baptistry. And he asked me where I was baptized. And I said, well, I was baptized in an evangelical free church. I know I've told this story before. Remember what it was? What kind of baptism did I have? I'm sorry. It was an alien baptism. He didn't want any part of us because I hadn't been baptized in a Baptist church. It didn't count. It's like, no, we did it right. I got saved first and I was baptized. But he had went to Texas, and he had been baptized by somebody in some Baptist church down there that gave him authority to come to Minnesota, and it was kind of like his is the only baptism that counted. I was like, where is that? I don't find that in my Bible. But yeah, what was one of the requirements of being an apostle? that rules everything out today. You had to see the resurrected Christ. Nobody's seeing it today, okay? You might see pictures of it, all right? But yeah, that was one of the qualifications. When Judas hung himself, and they're trying to find another one, that was one of the qualifications. It had to be somebody, and that's in Acts 1.22, that they had to have been a witness to the resurrected Christ. And that was one of the things that was going to be firmly implanted in their hearts and minds, if they ever got a little wobbly, they're gonna remember, no, I saw Christ, this isn't a fabrication, this is the real thing. Well, if you are faithful to the Lord, and as he was, a preacher, a teacher, an apostle, does that mean life was just gonna be smooth sailing for him? Think Satan's going to let somebody like that just have free reign? No, he's going to kick him every chance he gets, all right? He's going to face opposition. And I don't know if you scoured around and we knew the rest of the story and all the other people that we might find somebody else that had kind of as rough a life as Paul did. You know, it wasn't just in prison, but he's usually beaten and then thrown in prison and stoned. You know, I mentioned that one. How many times do you have to be stoned before you think, I don't know, man, maybe I'll find a different line of work here or something. No, but he stayed faithful to the Lord. And so it tells us that he suffered these things, you know. And if you're doing it right, I'm not saying, you don't go looking for trouble, okay? You don't go looking for, you don't be obnoxious and hateful and so on to people just so they'll treat you badly and then you can say, oh, I'm suffering. You know, it's kind of like Jehovah Witness, you know, if you shut the door in their face, they consider that suffering, you know, and that's a good thing. But Paul faced opposition, he suffered, he was imprisoned, and eventually he died because of his faith. But then we see here, in spite of the persecution, We see he doesn't say, okay, Timothy, this is the life you can expect. I would advise you not to go down the same road that I went on because this is what you're gonna face. He didn't try to talk him out of it, no. He tried to encourage him. He said, be faithful. But in being faithful, he's being realistic. He's not buttering it up, making it look like, you know, do this, do God's will, and everything will be a-okay for the rest of your life. It won't have any problems. No, I mean, he's realistic. You're liable to suffer. But what, you know, if somebody were to be interviewing Paul and say, what's the secret if there is one, okay? What is it that caused you to stick with it when others don't? And we see this as we look on here. He says, verse 12, he says, for the witch cause, I also suffer these things, as we mentioned. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed for, here it is, for I know whom I have believed, okay? He knows the Lord. He knows who he's believing in and I am persuaded He's convinced that he's able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. You know, he truly believes in the Lord. He truly believes he's given himself, committed himself to the Lord, and that the Lord is going to take care of him. Now, does that mean that he's going to dodge death? No. People can still take his life, but what can't they take? they can't take his soul, okay? And elsewhere in Philippians 3.10, it talks about knowing him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable unto his death. Paul really wanted to know. He wanted to know, Christ, he wanted to know the power of the resurrection. What kind of power is it that raises a man that's been dead for three days, raises him up, you know? I mean, that's power, okay? That's not kilowatts or something, okay? This is real power. And he said he was able to identify with his suffering. you know, and conformed to his death. Christ died as an innocent man. And in a sense, Paul, he's, Paul is not our savior, but for what he died, he was innocent. He didn't do anything wrong. He just simply preached the gospel that people didn't want to hear about. Okay. And, but he had experiential knowledge through his life. He wasn't just, You know, on fire when he first got saved there out there on the Damascus road, and you know, for a month, six weeks, or a year or two, the fire really never went out on Paul, you know? And the Lord can fire us up and keep the flame turned up. We don't have to just kind of keep turning that flame down, you know, until we're a pilot light, you know? We don't lose our salvation, but sometimes we can lose our zeal, our desire to live for the Lord, to be holy, to be a witness, to seek to have an influence on the hearts and lives of other people. But he was persuaded that God was going to take care of him. And they said this commitment literally means the deposit of me, okay? It works kind of like this. It's like when you go, I don't know if people have savings accounts anymore, but if you had, you go down to the bank and you make a deposit, And that bank, you know, of course they're saying we're insured for X number of thousands of dollars from the FDIC or something, but you deposit and they say, we're going to keep this money secure. Well, we're committing our hearts, our lives to the Lord, our salvation, our souls. We're committing it to the Lord. He's the keeper. It's up to him to keep. our salvation secure. It's not up to us. We don't, there's nothing we can do that's gonna keep us saved, all right? He says, you're safe, period. He didn't say, you know, this is a 90 day trial thing, or we're gonna see how this works out. I might change my mind. We can't lose it. When you make the deposit with the Lord, there's no taking it back, all right? I remember as a kid, that's a long time ago, and some of you may have seen something. We had this little bank, it was kind of egg-shaped, and it had slots in the top, but it wasn't like a piggy bank. It had all these little metal fingers, and you put that quarter or nickel or dime, whatever, into it, you couldn't get it out. You might be able to stick a knife up in there and jiggle around, but nothing came back out. You had to take it to the bank, and they had the key that would open up the bottom, and there's your money. We'll put that in your savings account, you know? So it wasn't anything like, I'm saving, and then we're upside down. Anybody else do that? Trying to get the money out of that piggy bank or whatever? Well, no, God's keeping it secure, okay, until he takes us home to be with him. And he's confident that God's going to take care of him. And looking back at chapter one, verse seven, just as a reminder, he says, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind. Okay? God's going to keep us, we don't have to be afraid of life. Like I said, for Paul, the worst that man could do to him and to us is to take our life. But then we're just simply going to sleep until Jesus comes back at the rapture and we're out of here. Okay, I mean, none of us are probably in a hurry to get out, but they can't take away our salvation. They can't take away our soul. And we don't need, we don't need to go through fear of life. God's protect, God protected Saul, Paul, many, many times. And it wasn't just something, oh, well, that's Saul, he's my good buddy, I'm gonna take care of him. No, the same thing's true for all of us. He's gonna take care of us. And though we may face dangers from time to time, it's not gonna take God by surprise. Oftentimes it does us. You know, it's like, oh man, didn't know about that one. But we look at scripture and it's not just Paul and Timothy. We see others. We look at Hebrews chapter 11, faith chapter. And a couple of groups inside that chapter. One group, it's God delivered them out of their difficulties. And the second group, though, was allowed to suffer. But they remain faithful to the Lord and obtain a good report. We don't know which group we're going to end up in, okay? We aren't going to end up in Hebrews 11 because that's written. But we may have to suffer before we get out of this life. We don't know. But in either case, God's looking after us, and it's not an oops on God part. He's watching over us, and we're one of God's kids, and He loves us, just like you love your own children, even more than we love our kids, if that's possible for us to understand. But and he's only gonna allow into our lives. What is ultimately best for us now from our perspective we might thinking That doesn't look like best for me You know, I would have chosen another option if I'd had a choice but God chooses the best. All right, and There's a reason he doesn't necessarily he doesn't run it by us. You know, is this okay if we do this? No, he just does it Now, and we probably, there are things in our lives that we don't understand this side of heaven. Maybe there'll be time when we get to sit down with the Lord or somebody else, and they'll explain, okay, this is why this happened. Or as like Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story. Here's the part that you didn't see. This happened in your life because I was trying to reach this person over here. And because of what happened to you, they were watching your life, they got to thinking about their own life, where they're going to spend eternity, and they trusted Christ. People get saved. Other things happen in people's lives. decide that, you know, I want to live for the Lord. And well, we see one more example here about that in verse 16. And following here with Onesiphorus, and another one that was faithful to him. He says there in verse 16, the Lord give mercy unto us, the house of Onesiphorus, for he oft refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain. But he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently and found me. And the Lord grant to him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day. and how many things he ministered unto me in Ephesus and know us very well. And so he had a ministry to Paul. We don't know exactly what all he was doing. You know, at one time when Paul was in Rome, he was kind of under like house arrest. He was able to be in a house, people could come and go. But the next time he ends up in jail, You know, and imagine, here comes this really runaway slave coming into Rome, big city, whether he knows anybody or not, we don't know, but somehow is able to go and find Paul. Where he's at? He's in prison, okay? Probably down in the depths of the prison there somewhere. But he says there in verse 17, he sought him out diligently. he went and found him and sought to minister to him in any way that they would possibly let him. And we don't really have any details of that. But he says here that he's praying that the Lord would show mercy towards Onesiphorus because of his faithful service. to Paul, and he committed him to the Lord, even as he had committed himself to the Lord. And we see in, let's see here, 1 Peter 1.7. First Peter 1.7 says, the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found in the praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. One of these days, the Lord's coming back. And I don't know, I haven't written that out to see if it would fit, but put it on the sign. Lord may be coming back in 2025, are you ready? I mean, he could do it in 24 yet, we're not done yet. That would truly, wouldn't that be something? Really being home for Christmas, huh? But yeah, but he's talking about some precious things, gold, but what? It's tried by fire. You know, you've heard that explanation, no doubt, of you put the gold in the pot and heat it up and the dross, the impurities come to the top and they scrape it off and comes up and scrape it off until you can really kind of see yourself in it. I remember doing that in a metal shop a long time ago. It wasn't gold. It was aluminum. But yeah, I mean, we may have to go through some heat before we're done, okay? But the Lord's doing that to purify us. And we don't have to fear again, though. The Lord's with us. He's like, God's not giving us a spirit of fear. He doesn't want us going around, but a sound mind and above power and of love and a sound mind. And so he desires that that be, that he would experience God's mercy. He challenges, backing up just a little bit here, Timothy back in verse 13 and 14, He challenges Timothy to remain faithful. And I guess, I don't say I guess, one of my goals is to be faithful to the end, to finish well. You know, like I said, it's not just how fast and fiery you come out of the gates when you get saved, but God doesn't want us to turn into a pilot light before we're done. We may not be able to do all the things that we once did, you know, but we can still, if we can think straight and we can talk and we can pray, and we can seek to witness to other people, we can be used to the Lord in maybe different ways than we did 30, 40 years before that, but God has things in mind for us. He wants us to be faithful. He tells Timothy, he says there in verse 13, hold fast, hang on, to what? The form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me. Okay, Paul sought to teach him the truth, okay? And he says, in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus, that good thing which was committed unto me to keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us. So he's talking about things he's been taught. Hang on to them, you know? Bible doctrine, I know some people are, you know, hear doctrine, they go, ooh. It's just teaching God's Word, you know? It's maybe God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, you don't just find God chapter one, you know, Holy Spirit chapter three kind of thing. They pull it all together. but to hang on to those foundational truths that you've been taught. Don't get wobbly somewhere along the way, okay? And there'll be people that will come along through your life that will have different ideas about stuff, and they might be somebody famous on TV or radio or whatever, stuff that comes in the mail, that try to convince you otherwise. Hang on to the truth. Stay firm to the truth. Don't let it go. Don't get wobbly along the way. And so he's encouraging him to be faithful to those things that he has accepted. And he says to do it also, he says, in faith and in love, which is in Christ Jesus. Again, that we Christ was meek and lowly, and yet he loved people. He sought to help them out, not only physically to heal the lame and crippled and blind and so on, but he also was looking for their souls. And God wants us to love the souls of man. And we come across some rough, crusty people, you know? But remember, nobody's too, Too bad, because sometimes people, oh, I could never get saved. I was, well, I was talking to a young fellow here. I say young because he's younger than me, but he was talking about his dad. He said his dad, you know, knew, he says, I'm sure he knew the Romans road. But he said, I'm too bad. I've done too many bad things. God can never save me. So I don't know if his dad ever got saved or not. But the thing is, nobody's too far gone. I mean, Paul was a persecutor of Christians, locking them up in jail and seeing that some of them were even killed. And God turned his heart around. So we have to be careful that we don't, or maybe they're unpleasant to be around. You know, I really don't want to be around this person, you know, for one reason or another. They're for a soul for whom Christ died. And so he wants us to continue to reach out to people. And our time's kind of gone, but let me just share this one last verse. And I call it the multiplication verse, okay? 2 Timothy 2.2, well, we'll read 1 and 2, he says, heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also." So you learn it, you pass it on to somebody else who will take it, and in turn pass it on to somebody else. It's not just adding, but it's multiplying. And that person goes and tells somebody, and the original person goes and tells somebody, and it multiplies. And that's how the early church grew fast. It wasn't just, they all came to listen to Peter preach. Those people went out and told somebody else and they got saved. And those people went and told somebody else and they got saved and boom. It exploded, you know? And somebody saw fit to talk to us about the Lord. Maybe many different people were involved in our salvation. But we got saved, and the Lord wants to use us as one of those cogs in the wheel. that he can use and wants us to be faithful at doing that all the way to the end. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Paul and Timothy. Thank you for their faithfulness, Onesiphorus. Lord, we pray that you continue to work in our lives. May your Holy Spirit have freedom to work in our lives so that we remain faithful to you. All the way to the end help us not to get wobbly along the way Or to cool off and and just think we can kind of coast on in from here And we thank you for what you'll do for us in Jesus name. Amen All right. Thanks for coming here this morning I'll mention it again, but you might want to check your mailboxes. There's a New prayer card in the box.