Sermon Transcript
to be a part of this community and a part of this work. It’s fabulous to see what he’s doing. And they just keep working on that piano, David, you, and Yuki. I don’t know how you do it, you know. You just— you’ll use anything, you know.
It doesn’t have to be a grand for you. You make it grand anyway, don’t you? Fabulous. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
Well, let’s take our Bibles out, and we’re going to look again at the book of Acts. We’re going to— 2, 3 3-part series. This is the second part today. We started a study we’ve called Filled, and I think you’ll see the filled connection this morning. But we’re in Acts chapter 5, and this passage I’ve read so many times before, but I got to tell you, I got more out of this this time than I have at any other time in my life.
And I hope that the passage touches you as much as it has touched me and encouraged me and challenged me. I think it’s a passage that we might typically read through and think, well, I don’t really have a problem with this. But once you dive into the passage, I think you might come to think a little bit different about what we’re going to be looking at this morning. We’re going to hopefully avoid from what we learn here the fudge trap. All right, not the Gudge trap.
I’m talking about the fudge trap. And the fudge trap has nothing to do with Chocolate, you know, delicious chocolate, that sort of thing. What we’re talking about when we talk about fudging is that tendency that we have to stretch the truth, the tendency to exaggerate the truth, to make things seem better or bigger than they really are. In church circles, this is called ministerial license. All right?
Yeah, us ministers know how to do this really well. Somebody asks, so, like, how large is your church? Oh, you know, hundreds. Well, how many hundreds? Well, you know, we don’t really need to talk about specifics.
It’s just hundreds or thousands. How many conversions did you have last year? Oh, you know, a lot. That’s meaning zero. How many baptisms have you had?
So around church circles, we don’t say lying. We just say ministerial license. In other circles, we call this fish stories, right?
We don’t want to talk about lying, we’ll just talk about fish stories. So everybody, it seems to me, is prone to doing that. So for instance, if somebody asks you, what’s your weight?
Boy, we’ll find out right now if we’re going to fudge or not on that one. How old are you? Oh, you know, do I have to say? I mean, like literally? I’d like to exaggerate a little bit here.
How tall are you? I was with a couple people recently, and they’re both quite short. And so I said, so how tall are both of you? And I thought, you know, it was an innocent question, but— and actually their answer was really good. But I remember thinking to myself, right now, if you’re a short person that would rather be taller, And the other person says, I’m 5, you want to be 5’1.
And maybe you’re not, but there’s just that tendency at that point. How many miles per gallon does your car get? You ever fudged on that one? You know, you bought the car, it had the sticker on it, it said it would get this many miles per gallon, and so you want people to know that you’re getting that and more, because you bought a great car. You don’t want to have to say, well, I bought a lousy car that only gets 5 miles per gallon.
Are you kidding? We tend to stretch the truth, don’t we? How you doing on your homework? Are you doing your homework? You know, doing can mean a lot of things, right?
Is your room clean? Well, for my standards.
So, what’s your title at work? That’s an interesting one. I was listening to a guy talk about this. He said that he was marketing director. At his company, marketing director.
But that didn’t sound good enough, so he decided to change it to director of marketing. Had more words in it, he said, you know. Still the same thing, but we even on the job, when people ask us about our job, we tend to want to make it look better than it is so that they maybe, you know, would think highly of us or whatever it is. So this passage, Acts chapter 5, verses 1 to 11, addresses the matter of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. And I just absolutely found this passage convicting.
When I first started reading it, I thought, well, I don’t know, this is probably going to be for some other people. But then I began to realize there’s a lot here for me, and there’s some specific stuff here with regard to fudge prevention, fudge prevention. Now, I believe that if anybody needs this study, it’s us in the Silicon Valley, because we want to be better than we are. And oftentimes we can come across better than we really are because it’s just part of the culture. Silicon Valley is infected with the Ananias and Sapphira disease.
So, let’s look at it together and see what we can learn. I’m not going to go back into chapter 4, but chapter 4 ends with the early church selling property and giving the money that they got from the properties that they were selling to the apostles, to the benevolence fund in the church, and then this money would be distributed to those who had need. And what’s amazing is you have people like Barnabas, Joseph, and others who were selling the property and not just giving a little bit of the money that they got from their property, but they were giving the whole thing. So with that context, then you pick up chapter 5, verse 1, and we’ll just read through this. It says, now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.
And when it says piece of property, you already get the idea they probably had more. But they sold one particular piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but he brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet. And then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received from the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold?
And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God. When Ananias heard this, he fell down and he died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him. About 3 hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, Tell me, is this the price that you and Ananias got for the land? Yes, she said, that’s the price. Peter said to her, How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord?
Look, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also. At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. And then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
I think so. Now, I would call this— and I’m just going to give you 3 thoughts to hang your thoughts on this morning, 3 matters— I would call this a startling story. I mean, come on, this is a really nice couple who did a really nice thing, for others and for the church. They sold some property. They gave some of the money from the sale of their property to help people in need.
But in doing that, they lost their lives in a matter of seconds for one of them and in a matter of hours for the other person. They were both dead, both dead and both buried. I’d call that a startling death or startling deaths because it was totally unexpected for them. And it was totally unexpected for the church. I mean, if somebody here brought a gift to the church, you would expect that they would be commended for bringing that gift.
But in this case, obviously, they are not commended. But we do know this, what happened was enough to get everybody in the church’s attention. In fact, it tells us that the whole church got it, but also everybody got it, the community got it. And the whole church was seized, verse 5, by fear. And again in verse 11, they were seized by fear.
Great fear came on the church. Great fear filled the church. Now the question is, what kind of fear was this? Was it a bad fear? No, there are different kinds of fear.
I think this is actually a good fear. We call this the fear of God. The fear of doing something that would displease God, the fear of doing something that would merit God’s judgment rather than God’s blessing. And so that fear comes on the church. It put the first church in the fear of God.
Now, can fear be a good thing? Absolutely. If there’s an unexpected death, in your circle of friendships, that unexpected death could bring fear on others, right? If it was a heart attack and it was totally unexpected and you’re a part of the family, it might, because you haven’t had a checkup for a long time, create a little fear in you that would say, I gotta go get a checkup. I don’t want this to happen to me.
Now, if it did that, would that be a good fear? Yes. I mean, not the death itself, but the going to get the checkup. Yes, that would be a good fear. Is it a good fear for you not to put your hand on a hot stove?
Yes. I mean, you have a little bit of fear about that, right? I’m not going to— I know that if I put my hand on this stove, then I’m going to burn myself. So you intentionally don’t put your hand on the stove. Why?
Because it’s not smart to do that, and fear keeps you from doing that. So, what we have here is fear, a good fear that comes on the church that ultimately can prevent them from falling into the same sin. Startling story comes about when you look at the text by a decision. We’ll call it a risky decision. Now, what was the decision?
Ananias and Sapphira, before they ever brought the offering, conspired in advance to lie about the amount that they were going to give to the church.
And when you look at the text, it seems like the lie was both overt and covert, right? It was covert, evidently, with Ananias. It’s not stated. There’s nothing stated there. So, he evidently brought the offering in such a way that it implied that he was giving everything from the sale of the property.
It put it in other people’s minds that he was doing the same thing that Joseph Barnabas had done. It implied that. So, it was covert for him. But it was overt for Sapphira because Sapphira was actually asked by Peter, was this the whole thing? Was this the whole thing?
See, we don’t know if that question was asked of Peter— excuse me, of Ananias by Peter. But we do know the question was asked of Sapphira. And she gave the answer that they had conspired together to give before they ever got there, which was, we’re going to make it seem like They were given the whole thing. So it was overt on her part. It was stated.
So this lie is something that they came and they did in a way that hopefully nobody would find out. Now let me ask you a question. Were they pressured into giving everything? Was it expected that in the early church there when you sold a piece of property, You gave everything from your piece of property. I think the answer is actually given to us in the first part of verse 4, where Peter says to Ananias, didn’t it belong to you before it was sold?
And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? And the answer to both questions is yes, it belonged to you. And yes, the money was at your disposal for you to do as it was you chose or would choose to do. So, what he is saying to them is, you see, Peter’s telling him, this wasn’t expected. It wasn’t expected that you give the whole thing.
The problem here is that you’ve presented this offering as a lie. It’s a lie. You try to deceive God and the church. Now, what were they thinking? In fact, Peter asked that the last part of the same verse there.
What made you think of doing such a thing? I mean, what were they thinking?
You have not lied to men but to God. I think part of what they were thinking, we could deduce from this, is sometimes the same thing we think when we lie. Well, nobody will ever know. Nobody will know. This is just our little secret.
Oh, really? God the Holy Spirit knew, it tells us here. God knew, verse 4, but you go back to verse 3, the Holy Spirit knew. The Spirit of the Lord, verse 9, knew. And guess what?
In verses 3 and 9, even Peter knew. Peter was given the ability to know that both of them were lying. So, this lie that no one would ever know is actually a lie in and of itself. Be sure your sin will find you out, the Bible says, Numbers chapter 32, verse 23. Have you ever lied thinking nobody will ever know?
Nobody will ever find out? Anybody? Anybody? Wait a minute. Am I the only one?
Okay, this is a moment to decide if you’re gonna lie or stretch the truth right now, okay? Should we do this vote again?
Here it is. A part of it was obviously because they thought nobody will ever know.
And verse 3 says, because Satan had filled their hearts with the thought and the desire to lie. What were they thinking? Well, it probably got them thinking kind of like Adam and Eve, you know, there’s more here. There’s something more for you if you’ll just give part of the money, but you’ll present it in such a way that everybody will think you’re giving all of the money. What’s that?
That’s the forbidden fruit. They knew God had a standard of holiness we’ve been singing about this morning. They knew God had a standard of truth-telling. So, for them to go down that road was rather risky. And the day you eat of it, the Lord said to Adam and Eve, you shall surely die.
The scripture says the wages of sin is death. I mean, have we really believed that when it comes to stretching the truth, exaggerating and embellishing the truth, telling that little white lie? Do we really believe that the wages of sin is death? Do we really believe that lying is not a good thing? Do we take lying as seriously as we should?
How seriously did the early church take it, or how seriously did the community end up taking it after this? Well, if you go down to verse 13, it says, no one else dared join them. I mean, word got out, this place is crazy. They take things— God takes things serious here. Nobody else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.
I mean, something that was happening in the church scared the people. So let me ask this question: why do we lie then? Obviously, sin. Well, what is it about it? What’s the attraction in the sin that causes us to stretch the truth?
What’s going on there? May I suggest the same thing that was happening with Adam and Eve? And oftentimes it’s the same thing that happens in our lives, and it’s certainly the same thing that was happening here with Ananias and Sapphira. It is the desire to be someone else, or it is the desire to have something more. That’s what it is.
Why would I lie to you? Why would I stretch the truth? Because I want you to think higher of me. I want you to think I’m more significant. I want, in the eyes of the others, to be as significant as Joseph Barnabas.
See, it’s the desire to be something more than I am right now, and it’s the desire to have something else that I don’t have right now. You know, I could really use that money, and if nobody will ever know, I’ll just give as if it looks like I’m giving everything, but I’m going to keep back a little bit for myself because I could really use that. You see, what this is, is it goes all the way back. It’s still the pride of life, and it’s still the lust of the flesh, isn’t it? And so we can tend to exaggerate or stretch the truth.
Let me just say it simply this way: we stretch the truth to stretch our significance.
So if I could just change it just a little bit, then in my eyes I could see myself as more significant, and in your eyes you’ll see me as more significant. So what do we end up doing? Listen, we fake it.
We live out of our false self instead of our true self. Question: Were Ananias and Sapphira living out of their false self or their true self? It’s an easy answer, isn’t it? They were living out of their false self.
They wanted to be something that they were not. They wanted to have something that they did not.
They were living out of their false self. Have you ever lied or stretched the truth in order to have more or be more, to make others think you’re cool, you’re such a godly person? Have you ever hid behind the facade of the fake self, hid behind the facade of the fake self, rather than revealing your true self, coming out from behind the facade and actually revealing who you genuinely are?
Just to pick the topic at hand, it could show up in how we give or what we give or if we give. I think I’ve said this before. I’ll just mention it again. I used to, when I was early in the ministry, take the offerings, which means stand up and tell everybody to give the offerings, right? Isn’t it interesting the terminology we use?
But anyway, and so I would stand up and I would invite people to give an offering. And I can remember week after week doing that, but I was not an offering giver.
I was the offering prompter. You should give. You should all give.
But I made it seem like I was giving. You ever do that? Maybe not with relationship to an offering, but something else. I think the temptation to do that, to live from our false self, is there all the time. And oftentimes it just comes up in conversations that we have.
Came up this morning. I walked in here, I walked in here, and I walked up to the front. Jay was sitting here. And Jay— I met Jay. I’ve never— I don’t know, maybe we’ve met before.
I don’t guess— guess not. I gotta check so I can tell the truth on this thing. Anyway, so I met Jay, and, and the first thing he says is, thank you, Pastor, for giving up some of your message time for me to be able to share some of our story.
Now, I knew that the schedule had not taken away any of my message time, okay? But at that moment, seriously, at that moment I could have said, oh, it’s nothing.
Which it would have been nothing.
But I could have, I could have led him to believe, oh yeah, I’m such a wonderful pastor that I would cut my message because of you, and I love you, and I love your ministry, and oh, I just hope you feel more excited about me now that you found that out and checked the schedule.
There it is. I didn’t plan this. This happens all the time, people, in our relationships with others where they say things, they hint at something, and we either have a chance right then to straighten out the truth or not.
People ask us to pray for them. They say, would you pray for me? And you say, yeah, I’m going to pray for you. And then a couple of weeks later they come back and they say, hey, Thanks for praying because so-and-so, this is what happened and it was a work of God and I’m just so grateful that people like you prayed. And what do we say at that moment?
Many of us should say, I’m so sorry I didn’t pray.
That would be to live out of the true self. Wouldn’t it? But instead, we live out of the false self. And the false self is doing essentially the same thing Ananias and Sapphira were doing. What was that?
Making people believe that they were better than they were.
Instead of saying, you know what, I meant to pray and I didn’t pray. I wish I could have been a part of this blessing. Like the others that prayed.
And then after I talked to Jay there, I sat down here and you said to me, I’m so sorry I sat in your chair, or something like that. Did I sit in your chair? And I had another moment.
I had another moment. I could have said, yeah.
Now, I got to tell you, I got both of these right this morning, okay? Because probably the message is on my mind like it should be on my mind all the time.
This is right where we live, isn’t it?
I was working out at my daughter’s home. And there was somebody there that— I was in another room working out on one of those ellipticals, and the person in this room saw me vanish behind the door for an hour or so. Then I came back out, and she said to me, man, you’re like in there on that elliptical for an hour working out. That is so amazing that you have a workout like that. And there was another one of those moments.
Because I knew I had only been in there working out for 30 minutes, not an hour. But it would be so easy at that point to just say, yeah, you are right. I’m really something, aren’t I?
See, that’s the false self. It’s the desire to be more and to have more than we have right now.
And when we give into that, who’s to say that God wouldn’t take our life?
I mean, it’s just amazing that we’re still here. Come on, that’s all Ananias and Sapphira did was they just exaggerated the truth. Come on, you ever exaggerated the truth? You ever made people think you were more than you are?
Death happens. It may not happen, you know, immediately, but death happens at that moment when we live out of our false self. Our heart dies. Our witness dies. Our integrity dies.
Our character dies. Our soul dies a little bit. And get this one, our trustworthiness dies.
Trustworthiness. So, is it really worth it? Is it really worth making that kind of a risky decision where you say, I’m going to lie, whether it’s intentionally or intuitively? It’s just something that we kind of do. I’ll tell you what, if you begin to think about this as much as I’ve been trying to think about this, you’re going to find that there are so many times in your life where you are stretching and exaggerating the truth, like I’m finding.
Now, here’s what I know, okay? There’s a life-changing lesson here. The Lord detests phoniness. He detests it in his church. In the Lord’s family, Jesus’ family, he doesn’t want us to be liars.
He doesn’t want us to be deceivers. He doesn’t want us to be people that are telling half-truths. And the gravity of that is seen in what happened here. And I have to believe this is— I think the Lord was nipping in the bud the problem of fakeness in the church. Okay?
I think from the very beginning, the Lord said, we’re not going to have faking each other out as a part of the church.
I don’t want that. Let’s get rid of that kind of thing. So Jesus came down hard on that in his life and ministry, and you see it after his life and ministry. Let me just take you back just for a moment, for instance, to a time that he came down hard on phoniness. Do you remember this passage, Matthew chapter 23, verses 27 and 28?
Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! This is Jesus speaking to the religious leaders of the day. That’s pretty strong language, wouldn’t you agree? You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything else— just dead men’s bones and everything else unclean, everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy, and wickedness.
Listen to how Peterson translated this in The Message: You’re hopeless, you religious scholars and Pharisees, frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots— grass clipped and the flowers bright, but 6 feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, But beneath the skin, you’re total frauds. Now, this is Jesus speaking to people that are just faking it when it comes to religious stuff, and he’s upset. Do you ever get upset when somebody lies?
You know what? You’re in good company. You really are, because lying is not good of any sort. It’s not good this way. In our relationship with God, and it’s not good this way in our relationship with each other.
Lying destroys relationships. So it’s a serious matter, so serious, listen, that 2 people in the first church lost their lives after lying because the Lord doesn’t want that to be in his church. He wants His church to be a place where people live out of the true self, where honesty and integrity and authenticity and transparency is a part of our life. That’s the context that He wants for the church. Do you know what the number one reason is that people want nothing to do with the church?
You know what it is?
Hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy. It’s almost as if we missed this huge lesson that Jesus tried to teach his church. It’s been forgotten so that now we have almost mastered the art of living with the false self. So is there room for us to make improvements in this area? I think so.
There’s plenty of room because in our world, listen, we’re all about image management.
What’s image management? It’s living behind the facade. It’s living a lie.
It’s hiding behind our false self instead of living in our true self. It’s acting like we got it all together. When we don’t even come close to having it all together. But we’ve learned to do that, and especially in the Silicon Valley, because in the Silicon Valley you’re expected to have it all together. You’re expected to be better than you are.
So you learn how to present yourself as somebody who’s better than you are.
And if you do something wrong, you don’t own up to it or you don’t admit it. You hide it.
You don’t hint at it. You find a way to kind of skirt your way around it. So let’s say you haven’t done a job, and the, the bottom line reason why you didn’t do this job that you agreed to do is because you’ve been irresponsible. But instead of telling somebody that you’ve been irresponsible, you present a false self, or you don’t go there, and you don’t experience the true self. So the Silicon Valley doesn’t help with this thing.
And by the way, the church doesn’t help with this either, because the church is a place where we’re expected to be better than we are. I’m talking about that right now, right?
Yeah, we want to be transformed people. We want to be genuine people. We want to be authentic people. We want to grow to be more and more like Jesus Christ. But the fact of the matter is, if we own this as the Apostle Paul did, we would find ourselves saying in the true self, the things I want to do, I don’t do, and the things I don’t want to do, I do.
That individual that said that also said this. Watch Philippians chapter 2, verse 12. Therefore, my dear friends, as you’ve always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, Continue to work out your salvation, with what? With fear and trembling. What’s he saying?
Should we give up this pursuit of seeking to be better than we are? Absolutely not, because in this is honoring and glorifying God and having better relationship with him and a better relationship with each other. So we don’t give this up. We keep chasing that, but in chasing that, we are seeking to be people who live in our true self, who aren’t lying. And the key to doing that— do you see it here in Philippians 2?
The key to doing that is living with godly fear, which isn’t something we talk much about. It’s letting godly fear help you do the right thing.
See, it’s not accidental that fear came into the church because fear would become the deterrent to lying. Fear is needed to keep the church pure. Otherwise, we can live fabricated, untruthful lives. So the scripture says, Proverbs 16:6, by fearing the Lord, People avoid evil. Proverbs 9:10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
See, it all comes back to the fear of the Lord, because the fear of the Lord works in us to take the appropriate, correct actions. And had Ananias and Sapphira been living in the fear of the Lord, they would not have been filled with lies. The missing piece there was the fear of the Lord. This morning I went over to the fitness center to exercise, but before I left I turned on the space heater. I put it in such a place that we’ve never put it before.
And as I was driving away, I was thinking to myself, as Bernice was still sleeping, what happens if the space heater falls off of this little thing that I put it on and it starts burning the house up? And I had some fears about that. And then I had this internal dialogue. Do I call her? Do I not call her?
Do I call her? Do I not call her? Because she’s sleeping right now. Maybe, you know, if I call her, she’s going to be mad, and I don’t want that to happen. And no, she would not get mad, but, you know.
And so there’s this dialogue. And so finally I text messaged her. I started with, I’m so sorry to wake you up. You know, anyway, I should probably read you the exact words right now so we could be truthful about this, but The point is, is that I responded to my fear. That was a good fear.
And then she did whatever it was she wanted to do with the space heater, right? See, that’s a good fear. And when we respond to the fear that God has placed within us, that’s a good fear because it’s a deterrent to doing that which is wrong. If you’re— the bottom line here is if you’re filled with godly fear, you won’t give in to Satan’s deadly lies.
If we’re filled with godly fear, it’ll keep us from lying. It’ll keep us from living a lie. It will keep us from image management. It will keep us out of the false self. If you’re filled with fear, you won’t be filled with lies.
You want to please God. You want to live for God’s valuing, not somebody else’s valuing, not what somebody else thinks because you exaggerated the truth. But you’re living for God’s sense of net worth and value. Now, some of us sitting in this building this morning, seriously, we need to do some serious thinking about this, just as I’ve been trying to consider in my life. Because listen, from childhood I learned to fake it.
I did. It was like survival around the home in some ways. And so it’s so easy to just translate that into your life. I’ve seen myself fake it on the golf course. Some of you say, I’m not surprised.
Where, you know, I hit a bad shot and I say to the guys, let’s all take mulligans, right? Okay? What is that? I just don’t want to deal with the real truth here. Whether it be from faking it on the golf course to, did you pray for me, Dave?
Oh, of course I did. I’m the pastor. What are you thinking?
See, there’s room in my life for improvement just as much as there’s probably room in every one of our lives for improvement.
How should we feel about that? We should accept that as a gift from God, right? The room for improvement is a gift from God. It’s an opportunity for us to turn to God in genuine repentance and say, Lord, no more false self stuff.
I don’t want to live this faking it life. It’s so much better to walk in and have somebody say something for you— to you that maybe is honoring, but yet at the same time to get the story straight and then to sit down and have a good conscience and not feel like, oh, I got to go fix that again. See, it’s all about the genuine. It’s all about the imitation. And Jesus wants genuine Christians.
He doesn’t want Christians to walk around faking it with each other. Genuine is so much better, so much better. Where does it come from? It comes first of all from salvation in Jesus Christ where we realize we can’t earn or deserve our salvation, so we accept it as a gift. And it comes from this continual walk in sanctification where we want and so desire to become more and more like Jesus Christ.
How does that happen? Well, one of the ways it happens, as we’ve seen this morning, is that we live in the fear of the Lord. And as we live in the fear of the Lord, it makes us the real thing. Isn’t that what we want? Amen.
Let’s pray. God, thanks for helping us this morning see this text in light of where we struggle. My prayer would be that you would work in each one of us what is found here, and we would see it as a gift to become that person that you long for us to be, and we would be responsive to that. We would be open to that. We would be transformed by that.
Would you make us more conscious of our conversation with others, of our thoughts, of what we’re looking for, who we’re looking to to get our sense of value and worth. Keep us from stretching the truth to stretch our significance. May we find in you the courage to live right where we are in our true self.
And from there, Lord, may there be progress made. Remind us that you love us. Help us live with an awareness that you are with us all the time. Help us live with a conscious desire to please you. May we live with proper fear so that it keeps us on the path that brings you honor and glory.
And we pray if there’s anybody that’s here this morning that’s not yet received the gift of life, Father, may this be the moment even now where they say yes to you, in Jesus’ name. And everybody said amen. Well, this has been a wonderful time this morning. I hope you’ve been encouraged, challenged, maybe probed a little bit. That’s fine.
That’s good sometimes, isn’t it? And I pray that God will take what we’ve learned here this morning with us. It will help us become even more and more like the people he so longs for us to be. Let’s go out this week. Let’s impact the community for Christ.
Is everybody set to that? Amen. All right, I hope you meant that. Have a great week in the Lord.
Very practical. Yes, I love that. Isn’t that amazing? It’s just, uh,
