I ask you to turn in your Bibles before we pray to John chapter 21, the last chapter in the Gospel of John. I know we're praying for your pastor there today to have a prosperous day in the Lord. I believe he's in Arkansas, back over at a church that he attended for a long time. I heard him speak of it, and I know he loved the church and those people over there. We want to remember him as we pray. Let's ask God to bless him and us. Father, we do thank you for another beautiful day that you've given us and the strength to get up and come to the house of God and to rejoice in the promises and the good words we've heard as we've sung the songs of Zion. We thank you for them. We thank you, Lord, for the promises that we found in them, that you would keep us here, that you would not forsake us, that you would go with us, bind up our wounds, and when we feel that we can't go another step, Lord, you pick us up and take us home. You have been so good to us and blessed us in so many ways for so long. We sometimes are tempted to just take you for granted, Lord. We know that's not what we need to do. We need to ever be mindful that all the blessings that we have come from our God. And we pray now, Lord, that you will help Brother Ray as he preaches there in Arkansas and rejoices with the people there and other servants wherever you place them. As they preach your true word, God bless them and help them. And then, Lord, help us here to see what you want us to see and to know what you want us to know. All for the glory of Jesus, we pray. Amen. In the Gospel of John, We find some very interesting things. What this chapter tells us about is Jesus after he was raised from the dead and came back for those days before he ascended into glory. And these are some of his last words. And I heard somebody say a long time ago, when you find the last words in the book, pay special attention to them. And so I want to do that this morning. My subject this morning is why I love Jesus so. Why I love Jesus so. And we're gonna talk about that this morning and why we should love Jesus and I know that we do. We're starting with verse 15 of the 21st chapter of the Gospel of John. And let me just walk you through these verses that preceded that. Peter and his went back to fishing after the Lord was crucified and they were awfully discouraged. Those disciples were awfully discouraged. God's people can get discouraged sometimes by taking note of what's around them more than what's going above them. And I think we need to stop and remind ourselves today that we are better off paying attention to what God is doing instead of what man is doing. Because man is limited. Man can only do so much. But God can do all things. He can override all things that men may do. And so as they went back fishing, suddenly Jesus appears on the shore beside the lake there, and He calls out and asks them, have you caught anything? And they say, no. These are professional fishermen. They know how to do this. but they haven't had any luck, they've been fishing all night, and that's the right place at the right time to do that here. But all of that was in vain, no fish. And so he says, put your net on the right side. In other words, he was telling them where the fish was. And remember, Jesus is God now. And he said, put your net on the right side, and the Lord of heaven commanded the fish to come together, and they were able to lift them up in that net. You see, God can take care of our problems. You know, for fishermen who are professionals to go home and say, we didn't catch anything, that's pretty low. And you and I sometimes feel pretty low. But the God who brought the fish to Peter will bring the victory to us and bring the aid and the help that we need. And so, as they began to pull those fish in, I believe it said John looked up and said, that's the Lord. And when he did that, Peter, and you know, Peter is one of a kind. Peter never does what everybody else does, what you would think normal people would do. He puts his coat on and jumps in the lake and starts swimming to Jesus. And so as they pulled these fish in, it says that there were so many of them there that it ought to have broken that net. But Jesus made that net strong enough to hold an overflow fish catch. And they were dragging those up to the shore and Peter swam to the shore and they came on in the boat and pulled the fish in. And when they got there, here's what they saw. They already had a fish fried, you might say. He had fish and bread for them to eat already. And there's something else I've noticed in there. He says, let's take some of your fish and put them here and eat them too. You see, God, when he works, he works through us many times. He works through us. We don't need to just sit back and say, well, God's gonna solve all my problems. I'm gonna close my eyes and take a nap. No, that's not the way he does. He uses us and so we see that here as they added their fish to what he already had cooking. They had more than enough fish. And that was a wonderful thing. But then Jesus started having a conversation with them. And I want you to know what he said to them. At verse 15, he said, and when they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Do you love me more than these? He said unto him, yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He said unto him, feed my lamb. He said to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, Lovest thou me? He said unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He said unto him, Feed my sheep. He said unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? And Peter was grieved, because he had said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, and thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus said unto him, feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. He asked him three times, do you love me? That is a good question for us to consider from time to time in our own lives. Now saying that you love somebody is one thing. You can use words and say the words But where do you back it up? How do you back it up? In another place in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. In other words, live the way I've instructed you to live. He had those men there for Three and a half years teaching them the things of God, how they were to live, and how they were to serve him. And he said, if you love me, keep thy commandments. And that's the way we have to show our love for God, too, and the Lord Jesus. By following him and doing what he said to do. Not doing what we want to do, if that's contrary to what he said, but do his way. His way is always the best way. His always is the way that will keep us out of trouble and trials and tribulations many times that we would get into if we didn't follow his way. So he says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Let's think about some reasons this morning why we ought to love Jesus. Well, the first thing I suppose might come to our mind is we ought to love Jesus because of what he did. And what did he do? The Bible tells us that, doesn't it? is that he left the glories of heaven, the rejoicing of the angels, the praise and majesty of heaven and came down to this old dark sinful world of troubles and trials and lived here with troubles and trials. He left this place in heaven to come and take your place and my place before God. We ought to love Jesus because of what he did. And just so that we will understand what he left and what he did coming down here. I noticed in Philippians, the second chapter, that Paul is writing to the Philippians about love and compassion and mercy and so on. And he says in verse three of the second chapter here in Philippians, he says, let this mind be also unto thee. Let this mind, that's verse five, let this mind be in you. which was also in Christ Jesus. In other words, think like Jesus was thinking. Not only are we to do, but we're to think. Is he the master of our thoughts process? When we think, when we think through things, when we think of things that must be done and ways of doing things, do we take his mindset? Do we follow him and his direction? Do we say, Lord, show me the way out of this, or show me the way through this, or show me the way to this. Let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. And now he talks about what Jesus did. Notice in verse six, he said, he was being in the form of God. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. What does that mean? That means that in heaven, he was not limited in any way. But when he came down here, he limited himself in certain ways. First of all, he limited his display of glory. He could walk down the road and people wouldn't recognize him as the son of God. Why? Because he had clothed himself with humanity and shut off that glory for a period of time. Of course, he went up on the Mount of Transfiguration, you remember, Peter, James, and John, and he opened up and revealed to them his glory and his honor and his majesty there, and they saw it. But for the most part, most people did not see anything about God when they looked at Jesus. And so it says that though he was God, being in the form of God, he started, in other words, he didn't mind giving that up for a time to come to earth. He didn't mind giving up some things to come to earth for you and me, is what he's saying. And so he says, in verse 7, he made himself of no reputation. He wasn't up out here to have a bunch of folks cheering him on and clapping and urging him on. In fact, most people resisted what he had to say and what he did. He wasn't in it for a reputation. But he took upon himself the form of a servant. He became a servant. In Matthew, in a place, he says the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which is lost. He said, I have come to serve, not to be served. Now, if we have the mind of Christ, then we ought to have the attitude that we're not here for folks to wait on us, to serve us as a Christian, but we ought to be in this business of service ourselves. We ought to be engaged in service as he was engaged in service. And it says here, found in passion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Now, if you will look at that, that is a progression down. Starts out by saying he's God, he's filled with majesty, glory, honor, and all. And then he moves down and talks about not holding on to that. And then he says he's not here for reputation. And then he goes further, he says he's here to just look like a man, and then he's here to be a servant. And he goes on and says, and he's here to die, and he's here to die on the cross. You see how he shows how God's son came down from where he was up here and all the glory and the majesty and all that. And he brings us down and says here's where he wound up, on the cross of shame and all of that. for you and for me, is what he says. So let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. If you just stop and think for ages to come, even now, he's been glorified and honored by the angel. The Old Testament and the New Testament both testify that in Isaiah, the sixth chapter. Remember, Isaiah said, in the year that Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up." God showed Isaiah a vision of the glory of Jesus Christ. He says his train filled the temple and he said there were angelic beings, cherubim they were called. And it said they had six wings. And this is a heavenly place, you know. Things are not like that down here. First of all, we don't see angels down here, do we? But we can see them in heaven. And with six wings, it said, and with two of them, they hid their face. With two of them, they hid their feet. And with two of them, they flew. So we see that that's the kind of place Jesus came from. And that's the kind of place he went back to. And let's say the third place. That's the kind of place you're going to take your pizza. See, he was in a place of majesty and glory and all of that. And John in the 17th chapter, he prays what's called the high priestly prayer. When he's praying to God, he says to the Father, Father, restore unto me the glory that I had with you when I was with you. In other words, he says, I'm coming home, Father. and I'm looking for a homecoming when I will once again be with you in all the majesty and glory there." We're so pleased and so blessed to see what Jesus is saying to us here. He came from the lustrous glory of heaven down to this, oh, can I say it, nasty place. Oh, stinking, sinful, wicked place. He came here on a mission, and that mission was to redeem and to rescue the souls of his chosen people given to him before the foundation of the world ever came into existence. And now he's looking forward to going back. And I wonder this morning, have you thought about your home going? Have you thought about It may be bad down here, Lord. I tell you what, I don't like what I'm seeing down here. I don't like what I'm hearing down here. I don't like what they're doing around me. I don't like what they're doing to me. But God, give me a vision that I'm going to be with you where none of this kind of stuff is going to be. And you know, you go over there in the book of Revelation and When it describes heaven, it does in a very strange way. It does not tell us so much about what we see there as what we don't see there. And what he says we don't see there is we don't see sickness, sorrow, death, troubles, trials, and all of those kinds of things. We're not going to have any sickness up there. We're not going to have to worry about COVID up in heaven or any other disease. People who've lost their limbs or came into this world they formed in some way, they're going to be as perfect as any angel in heaven as far as what God's going to do. You see, it's going to be a glorious place and that's the place he left. And so I'll tell you again, we all love Jesus. When we start thinking about where he came from and where he came to and when he got here, what he did, he didn't just do it for folks, he did it for people to trust in him and love him and walk with him, that he is the children of God. He did that to redeem them from sin and sorrow. Now, we know of his majesty not only by the way he described heaven, but we can look around in this world and see what Jesus was able to do. We need to be reminded, first of all, that Jesus was the creator of all things. So let's just go back to John again, and notice in the first chapter, I know the Bible says in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, but Jesus was God too. And so we see in the third verse of the first chapter of John, it says, all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In other words, everything that was made, was made by him. Now, let's go over to Colossians and remember that that's the next book past Philippians. And in Colossians, in the first chapter and verse 16, where once again reminded that he's the creator. He said in verse 16, For by him, that is Jesus, all things were created that are in heaven, in earth, that are visible and invisible. They may be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him. In other words, whether you can see it or not, Jesus created a lot of things that we can't even see. But we will see one day when we are able to see it deeply. But he's telling us here everything that's created was created by him. Now notice here on the last of that 16th verse, it says something else. It doesn't say just it was created by him, it was created for him. This world was made for him. You and I were made for him. Now, Adam and Eve, sinned and put a curse on this world. And so now we're told over, I think it's in Peter, where Peter says when God is through with this world that has sunk to the low level that it is because of sin, God's going to burn it up. He says even the elements will melt. But then he says, but he will create new heavens that is the planet new heavens and a new earth and so jesus is the creator and when you read in the genesis one it says god created on the first day god created this and so on so on and he said what what did he say about he said it is good and then you go on to day two and you see he created something else in day two And he looked at it and he said, that's good. And he did that time and time again. And then it got to the sixth day where he created man and the land animals. And he created it and he said, boy, he went further than that. Then he said, this is very good. That also reminds us that whatever God is doing is good. We may not understand it, we may not like it, we may wish he was doing something else, but when he does something, it's always good. Which reminds me of a verse in Romans chapter eight, that all things are done for the good, for our good. And so, whatever's going on in your life right now, don't think God's put you on the shelf and got about you and you're gonna have to grunt your way through it. God is there with you, working His will. The Bible says in Daniel, He worked His will in the armies of heaven and of the inhabitants of this earth. God's in charge. And we need to remember that sometimes. It's sort of easy to remember that on a Sunday morning. But you know, Monday comes along, and then Tuesday, and then about Wednesday, you know, That's beginning to wear a little thin, depending on where you are and what you've had to go through. And maybe by the end of the week, you have really had a tough week, and maybe you're tempted to listen to the devil, who will always talk to you if you give him an ear, who will say to you, uh-huh, see there, God let you have all this trouble inside of you. He doesn't love you. But you know what? Everything that happens to us is according to God's will as far as being under his control. Now I realize that that's hard for me to get a hold of sometimes and maybe for you too, but let's just remember what he does is what always good. And you stop and think about he came and created this world and it was all good, but look how the world treated him when he got here. We're told in John chapter 1 verses 10 to 11, he came to his own, and his own received him not. Jesus did not come down here to earth to judge people, he said that. He will judge, but it's not gonna be on earth, it's gonna be in heaven. He says, I'm not come to judge the world, but to save the world, that is the people of the world, not all the people, but the people who are in this world. But the nation, the Jewish people who should have known more about the Messiah, who had all the scripture for all the years and all seen God do all of his wonderful work. I mean, they had a front row to see God's work. And you know what? They closed their eyes and ignored it. And when Jesus came, they rejected it. The one that the Father sent, they rejected. Does that remind you of a parable Jesus said one time? about a man planning a vengeance and going to a far country for a while. And after a while, he sent back one of the servants to get whatever was due him. And it says that they beat him up and sent him out empty-handed. And so he sent another servant. I think if I'm correct, they sent three servants. He sent three servants. And they beat him up and finally killed one and ran him off. And then it says, and so at last he says, surely they will honor my son for he is the heir. And they sent him. This is a parable Jesus said. And when they got there, they said, he's the heir, he's going to get all this. We're going to kill him so we can get it. And Jesus said, that's the kind of thing that happened. All these servants that they killed, that was the prophets. You see, Isaiah, Jeremiah, all of those books of where God sent the messages to them. They look at them and say, I don't want that, I don't want that, I don't want that. That doesn't fit in my lifestyle. That sounds like today, doesn't it? You've got people, and you can read the Bible to them, and they've got a lifestyle that they want to live that's against what the Bible says. They're going to reject the Bible. They're just going to reject it. And say, I am going to live the way I want to live, no matter what anybody says. I am living my life because it's my life. Oh, I think about all those marchers out there with those signs, you know, out there saying, it's my Bible. Talking about women who abort their babies, who murder their babies. They say it's my body. Nobody has the right to tell me what to do with my body. They don't ever talk about the body of that little baby. As though he cannot be seen, so therefore nobody's going to think about it. No, but God's watching. And I'm going to tell you believers this morning, I know you believe this just like I do, that this nation is going to be judged by God for the murders of all these unborn babies through all these years, over 30 years now. I think I saw that there was 40 million of them, they said, something like that. Never able to take the first breath of life. And yet they feel like it's their right to do that. That is exactly what the Bible says the world rejected them. He came but the world rejected him. But I want us to know then that what God has done You know, he came and we're told that he was a lamb that was slaughtered. Why do people act that way? Why do people reject God? Why do people do that kind of thing? Well, let's look in 2 Corinthians for a minute and see if that will help us understand why the world is the way it is and men act the way they do and so on. Verse 14 of 2nd Corinthians 3, it says, their minds were blinded. For until this day, the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses read, the veil is upon the heart. Says they're blind. They blinded their eyes. They put blinders on. They don't want to see what you're talking about. You talk to them about Jesus and His power and His might and His holiness and the way He came and what He did and what He wants us to do, how He wants us to live and all this. And you start talking to these kind of folks. And if they don't attack you, they put blinders on. They don't want to hear it. They don't want to see it. And so it says the reason people act that way is because their minds have been blinded. I said you can get the best preacher you ever heard of in a pulpit to preach people. But if God has not opened their minds and their hearts and opened their eyes to see what they are in the sight of God and what they need in Jesus Christ, I don't care who he is or how long he preaches, they'll sit there and twiddle their thumbs all day long. Whereas the child of God, the one that God has touched with His Spirit and makes them realize how they need a Savior, they will drink that in and rejoice that Christ has already come and He has died for our sins. He's already been judged. And therefore, we have much to rejoice in now and as the days go by and even to eternity. No desire for the gospel. No desire to hear anything about what God said. Blinded minds and so on. I think sometimes, you know, it can't get any worse. And then I hear about something that seems like it just keeps on getting worse and worse and worse. Over in Ephesians, chapter six, the last chapter, he tells us in the waning words of this book, it's a chapter, he tells us, that we need to put on the armor of God. Have you got your armor on this morning? What am I talking about? That is being clothed with what God furnishes to stand against sin. He says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand. Without it, you're not going to stand. Against the wiles of the tricks of the devil. It says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood and against principalities and powers rulers of darkness in this world, but against spiritual wickedness in us. Our enemy is not some other human being. Our enemy is the devil. That was the enemy of Jesus, and Jesus' enemy is ours. We inherited Jesus' enemy when we became a part of the family of God. The Bible says Christ is in us, and we're in Christ. the very attitude that the devil had for Jesus, he has for Jesus' people. So he says, you better arm yourself because he's going to trick you. He's going to make you think something that God didn't want you to think, or he's going to make you go over here and do something that God, that's not pleasing to God. Put on the whole armor of God. Now somebody said, how do you do that? He says, you do that with prayer. And sometimes fast, and he says, wherefore, take unto you the whole arm of God, that you may be able to withstand the evil day, and have him done all to stand. It's gonna take everything you've got to stand against the wickedness of the devil. Some folks make jokes about the devil, you know, the man in the red suit down there with the fort model, that's not Paul, either. The Bible says he is an angel, who has put himself in this world to trick people and to tell people things that are totally against what God says. But he appears to be an angel, so a lot of folks are taken in by him. He says, the tricks, you do that stand, and the girls don't talk about all the different parts of the body that need to be covered. And what do we get from that? Well, we need to stop and say, how would the devil get at me if he had a chance? through what I hear, through what I see, and where I go. That's just three ways that he can do it. So we need to have the armor on when we begin to hear from the devil, or begin to see something from the devil, or begin to hearing him say, go down this road, follow this path. He said, put on the whole armor of God. So we can say, I love Jesus because of what he has done. Not only that, but what he's doing today. You know, Jesus just doesn't save his people and just, you know, leave it up to them to do the best they could. And he calls them to heaven. A lot of people take that attitude, therefore, they're just out there slumping around in the mud, admiring what sin is wicked. And they're just trying to walk in the mud, admiring how hard it is to get your feet up, and you don't want what's on there on your feet. But you know what? We find ourselves out here in this mud empire of this old wicked world we're living in. It hasn't gotten better. It's gonna get worse. And so, he's not through with us. The Bible tells us that he ever liveth to make intercession. Listen to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21. It says, for he, that is God the Father, made him who knew no sin, the Son, to become made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. What does that mean? That means that God came and put the holiness of God by Jesus Christ into our hearts and He took our sins and He put them on Jesus and put Jesus upon the cross. I guess a simple way to put it would be He let us swap places. with Jesus. He treats us now as his children like he treats his holy son Jesus. And he treated Jesus like we ought to have been treated. We deserve to die for our sins. The Bible talks about the wages of sin is death. The payment for sin is death. And somebody died for sin somewhere. Or else, if they didn't die for that person, that person's gonna have to die for their sins in eternity. Now that's a pretty, that ought to wake folks up, make them realize how precious Jesus is. For Jesus, you can say, he went through hell to get us, so we wouldn't have to go through hell. He gave the best thing that heaven, the only thing that heaven could give that would take care of my sin problem and yours. I mean, God reached down into the treasure trove of heaven and reached down into the depths of it and brought the best stuff. Somebody might say, well, why didn't he send a bunch of angels? Because angels couldn't do it. The angels that sin, you know, we read about that over there. They're the demons, but they're angels in heaven, the holy angels of heaven. Even in their holiness, they could not come and satisfy God's requirement for my sin and yours. So he had to bypass the angels and come, and there wasn't but one thing left in heaven for God to send to earth to save sinners, and that was his own son. His own son. You know, all my years of preaching, I've been trying to preach over 60 years now, I've heard a lot of stories and a lot of illustrations. I'm going to give you an illustration that I heard years ago, and it might work in what I'm trying to talk about here. It says that there was a man whose job was to raise and lower a bridge over a river, because sometimes down that river they had to raise it to let those ships go And so he raised and lowered it, you know, according to whether the ships need to go down the road, the river, or the folks need to use the road. Maybe you've been to a place like that. They're sure about those kind of bridges a lot. It says that one day this man's little son came to work with him. And being a small child and a restless boy, like most little boys are restless, he got outside where his father was working and began to play around. wound up on one of the pilings where the bridge was. So I was up there playing. And if he was going to be up there and that bridge is lowered, that bridge was going to come right down on that sun and crush him. And this story illustrates that. It said that when he heard the cars coming and the ships had already passed, it was time for the bridge to come down. pushed the buttons and loaded it, and he noticed his son was on the piling there, and he could not get the child's attention. And what's the father do? In this little story, it says he went ahead and let the bridge down, and crushed his son to save the lives of those people who needed to cross that bridge. Now, that may not suit you, but somehow, that's what God did. He did something to his own son to save somebody. And that somebody wasn't worth one drop of Jesus' blood. Do you think that you are worth what Jesus paid for you? I don't. Even though I have in my bosom that Jesus. The witness, it says, the spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're the children of God. Although I still stand amazed when I consider what Jesus did. I still do not understand why he did what he did, except out of love and mercy. And that's what mercy and grace is. And not only has he done something wonderful, he is doing something wonderful for us now. He is our guide, our director. He is our friend, our closest friend. He is a shepherd. We're the flock. He's a shepherd. He blesses us. He cares for us. And he hasn't forgotten about us. Hosea and Peter, it says, there'll be those who will squawk and say, what about the second coming? It's a long time, and he hasn't come yet. He's not coming. The Bible says the reason Jesus hasn't come back yet, and you can find that, I think, in 1 Peter 3, is because all the elect children have now been born and reborn. You see, to be elect doesn't mean that you have been regenerated. There are already elect people who haven't been born in this world yet. And so election doesn't save you, but it puts you in a place where God is saved. And so they say, well, you know, Jesus is not coming back. He's been gone a long, long time. He says, the reason I haven't come back yet is because I'm waiting for all of my elect children to be born into this world so that I may extend grace and mercy upon them and the benefits of the death of Jesus Christ will be their benefits. Them and all of those have been saved that God intended to be saved. Then Jesus is coming back. That may be tomorrow. It may be this afternoon. I don't know. I can't tell you when He's coming back. I know folks all the time try to figure it out. Jesus said, nobody knows. The angels of heaven don't know. And at that time, he said, even the sun doesn't know. But one of these days, one of these days, God's going to say, well, you know, all of my children that I chose before the world was ever made, all the elect and God, have been born in this world now. And the Holy Spirit has moved into their hearts and convicted them of their sin. And they are looking to Jesus. They're crying out to the Savior. They're rejoicing in themselves. He said, all of them are in now, curtains for this place. And I don't know what's going to happen in this world. I heard this morning on television that the Russians are threatening an atomic war. They're threatening to start dropping atomic bombs. Whether they'll do it or not, I don't know. Crazy folks do crazy things. With this I know one thing. They're not going to be in charge of getting rid of this world. When the time comes for this world to cease to be, and us to go into a better world, God's going to do the disposal of it. He's going to do whatever needs to be done to get rid of this thing, so we can have a better world. So I'll ask you again. Do you love Jesus? Has he done anything good for you? Is he doing anything good for you? If you don't feel like he's doing anything good for you, let me suggest to you that maybe you're not walking close enough to him to realize what he's doing. You may be jostling along with the crowd, maybe the wrong crowd, I don't know. But the closer you get to Jesus, the more you realize how much you need to love him. I'd ask you this morning to consider what He's done for you and then pledge your love, your undying love, your constant love for Him who loved you beyond understanding. Father, simple words like thank you seem to be insignificant and not enough now, but we do praise and thank you for your salvation. And we have much to be thankful for, much to love your Son for, much to love the Father for and the Holy Spirit. And we pray that our love will be evident to you as well as to others, no matter what it costs here, that we will show our love for you. Speak to our hearts and minds, and may everyone here leave this place duly convinced that they are where they need to be received. In his holy name we pray, amen.