Comfort One Another

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Appreciate our worship. Team Mike Lee did that song. You might have seen him on the Voice. He was on Team Blake. He and his wife are a part of our church, and so we're glad Mike shared that song with us today. You know, as we're aware, 25 years ago, our country was attacked on 9, 11. Most of you have followed the remembrances. Most of you have followed some of the video that has been shown on social media and on certainly on the news networks. And I think it's important that we commemorate that anniversary because there's a tendency that people have to forget. And one of the themes of the day that really came out is, is just never forget, never forget. In fact, in Deuteronomy 8, one of the things that our Lord was most concerned about, about his people was that once he had brought them through and once he had provided for them and once he had blessed and protect them, that they would forget. And there's a tendency we have, it's just part of our human nature to forget. And I do remember the events of that day. Cindy and I were at the house. We were getting ready to come into the office, and Cindy had Good Morning America on. And all of a sudden you see the plane as it hit the tower. And then the news reports were coming out. They didn't know exactly what was going on. Remember, you remember that? And so we just kind of watched as the rest of you did, just kind of stunned, not being able to believe our eyes of what we were watching. And then when the second plane went into the tower, it was obvious that our country was under some sort of an attack. And I just remember, just not necessarily fear, but just dismay. I didn't know even what to think. And it wasn't. Shortly after that, I got received a phone call from one of our members, a close friend of mine I met through Andy and Lee, Jim Wilkinson. And he was a special assistant to President Bush. And Jim called me, he was in the White House. And he said, we are working now to try to prepare the President's remarks to the nation. And so I'm wondering if you could send me some verses Some things that you're thinking we're just trying to compile from a number of ministers across the country so that we can prepare remarks for the president. And so I remember just all of a sudden having to kind of get into a different space, you know, kind of getting into a game zone. Okay, I got to think about verses. And what. I mean, what do I. And what are some verses that might provide comfort and help? And so I began to pull those things together and send those off to Jim. And I remember when we got into the office, our staff had gathered and we thought, we need to do something. We need to do something. And so we prepared a service. And many of you were in that service. We were at the grocery store, and we didn't know what to expect. But when we pulled that service together that night, we couldn't get everyone in that building. There were people out in the lobby, around the hallways. It was packed to capacity. And we did some worship and we did some prayer together because our whole nation was coming together. There was a strange dynamic that was happening in our country where people were not turning away from God. People were turning toward him. In fact, for a number of months following that day, for a number of months, every service we did on our weekend was packed. I mean, we could not get the people in the room. And not only were those services packed, but the offerings were growing and people were getting involved because there was a sense that I need to reorder some priorities given what has happened. And now you look at that 25 years later, and you wonder if we've kind of dropped our guard in some extent. You wonder if we have kind of forgotten to another extent. And you. You wonder if after a period of time that we've allowed our hearts to kind of grow cold when it comes to not only love of country, but when it comes to love of our. Of our Savior. And so this morning, as I was thinking about that anniversary and I was thinking about these one anothers that we've been talking about each and every weekend. The one that hit me, that I thought I would share with you today is the one another that says, comfort one another. Comfort one another. And man, what a thing that was happening in the life of our country. We saw it a little bit. And the Bible speaks of Koinonia. It was a dynamic that happened in the early church. In Acts, chapter four, they were under persecution, and that church was. People were losing their jobs and people were going through hardship. And so what the church did is they just rallied and they began to help one another and love one another and pray for one another and, yes, even comfort one another. And the dynamic of the Greek word of koinonia simply means to share something with someone. And then the second part of that is to share in something with someone. So there's kind of two levels of koinonia that happened in our country 25 years ago that happens and should be happening in the life of the church every day. And that is we gather as a group to share things with one another. Sometimes it's a prayer request. The Bible says you rejoice with those who rejoice. Sometimes it's a pray for me. We're going through a hard time because the same verse says, weep with those who weep. So you share things with others, and then you share in things with others. That's when it's more intimate and more involved. And that's when you begin to walk with someone through the experience that they are going through. And that's exactly the idea, I think, that the Bible had in mind when it was encouraging us to comfort one another, to not only share the experiences that we're going through as a church family, to share the heartaches and the heartbreaks and the celebrations and the wins, but also walk through those experiences with one another. There is a familial feeling you get when you have a church like that. There is a connection and a fellowship you have that's like another in a church like that. And so one of the things that I pray that comes out of this series is a greater involvement in the life of our church, regardless of the season that you're in, so that you can truly pray for one another, bear one another's burdens, share with one another, encourage one another, and as we're talking about this morning, even to comfort one another. We talk all the time. Everybody is broken. Everybody's just broken in different places, and they're broken over different things. And so we need each other. When Paul wrote in Romans 14, verse 7, I mentioned it last weekend, but he said this. He said, none of us live to ourselves alone, and none of us die to ourselves alone. We saw that dynamic on 9, 11. We see that dynamic in the life of the church where we need each other, we look to each other and we lean on each other. And God designed us to be relational people. I told you last week, the tendency you have when you're hurt, the tendency you have is to pull in, protect yourself, which is a normal, natural tendency. But then the negative side of that tendency is you can isolate and insulate yourself from people who are there to help you. And so what you have to do is be willing to receive help and be willing to admit that you actually. That you actually need help, because God designed us that way. I read where a Christian psychologist was talking about the way Christians relate to one another. It was pretty funny. He said Christians remind him of porcupines. Porcupines on a cold night. You've seen the porcupine. They have the quills. And he said that what happens with a porcupine on a cold night is because of the cold, they're driven together to stay warm, to survive. 9, 11. We were driven to the building, and for months thereafter, people came. And they were. Because we felt a sense of community and a need for one another. And there was this incredible dynamic of love, and you could sense it everywhere. And people were drawn together like the porcupines on a cold night, he said, that are drawn together to keep warm. But then he said, all of a sudden, the porcupines realize I'm kind of close to these people. I'm sharing a little too much of my life that I'm comfortable with. I don't know. This is all the relationship that I really wanted, I don't think. And so out come the quills, and we drive people away from us. And then he said, all of a sudden, we get back out in the world. We go through a life experience. It's difficult. We need comfort. We come together to stay warm and to survive until we get through the crisis. And then out come the quills and we drive ourselves away from one another. He said, what's crazy about it, he went on to say, is when I look at that experience of the porcupine, like Christians, he said, Christians describe that movement. They call it fellowship. He said to me, he said, it looks like some weird religious dance. And I'll just say this as kind of getting into this talk this morning. We've all done the dance, we've all done that. We've connected, and then we disconnected, and then we reconnected, and then we disconnected. And I'm glad the church is a wonderful place for you to get reconnected. I probably have as many people who will visit the church after I've done a funeral than any other life event that I'll ever do. It's uncanny, the numbers of people that once their heart is broken and once their heart is tenderized, they recognize the need they have not only for God, but the need they have for other people. And so God can work through those moments of Crisis and those moments of heartache to make us aware of a fundamental fact. He designed you and I for fellowship. Listen, guys, we need each other. And this idea of comfort is so powerful. And it comes in the letters that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. Now, let me tell you something. If you want to study a messed up church, look at the church of Corinth. Oh, my word. I don't care what kinds of scandals that have rocked churches in recent years. I don't care what your church experience is. Let me tell you something. You did not go to a church like Corinth. They had open prostitution in the church. Can you imagine? I mean, you talk about hooking up to a different level. These were prostitutes working in the. Everybody knew it was going on. So you had open immorality in the life of that church. Not only that, you had people who would show up early for communion, and they were typically the people who are a little better off than everybody else. So they got there a little earlier than everybody else. And they would. This is horrible. They would get drunk on the communion wine and they would eat all of the bread so that when the rest of the church got there, there was nothing for communion. You haven't been in a church that bad. And then to make matters worse, they didn't know where they were when it came to theology. I mean, they were so confused. They were as confused as a termite and a yo yo. They did not know what they believed. They could not defend their faith. They did not understand anything of the principles that Paul and the other apostles were teaching. It was a messed up church. In fact, there's an expression in the Greek called to be Corinthian. To be Corinthian is the expression of to be a playboy, to be a party girl. To be Corinthian means that you have access to the excess, and so you live life without restraint. That was that church. So Paul had visited there two times, and some scholars believe maybe three times in order to try to correct some of those things that were going on in that church. And so one of the things that kind of set it up for the context of the scripture I wanna read this morning is that the church, now they were angry at Paul. They had all this division, all this distraction, all this depravity that was going on in the life of the church. And now they turn on Paul. And the reason they're upset at Paul is they said he had not kept his word to them, that he promised that he would come back and visit them. And they heard rumors that he had avoided the trip. Instead, he wrote them a letter and that he had not kept his word. And some of them were doubting, is he really sent from God? Is he really a man of it? They were doubting his credentials and they were doubting his authenticity. And the people who one time supported him now turned on him. So Paul is responding in the verses that I'll share with you this morning to say you didn't know what I was going through. I had been beaten and left for dead. And the reason I didn't come back, as I said I would, as I couldn't at the moment, is because I was despairing even of my life. And when I reread that and I restudy that, it sets up. Something that happens to us oftentimes is we don't oftentimes cut each other enough slack. There may be a reason why a person who said they were gonna do something ended up not being able to do it. We don't know what was going on in their world. We shouldn't be quick to judge. I mean, here Paul was. He was angry at the church. And in reality, he should have done a better job of communicating with them. But then the church was angry at Paul, and to be honest with you, they should have cut him a little slack. So I can find fault on both sides of that situation. Because what they had was a failure to communicate. And that happens sometimes in a relationship. And so I'm saying when you go through those experiences of life where you're prone to question the people around you that love you and care about, always give them the benefit of the doubt. You may not know what they were going through. You may not know the circumstances surrounding their life. So cut them some slack. Think about this true ignorance. True ignorance is not seen so much in what a person doesn't know as it is in what a person thinks they know. That isn't so. Think about that. True ignorance is not seen so much in what a person thinks they know or doesn't know, rather, but in what a person thinks they know they didn't. So and so when it comes to how we relate to and interact with and how we care for one another, we always want to be careful to cut each other slack. Because no one, no one is perfect. And in the narrative I'm going to read, Paul presents this interesting word, in fact, 10 times in the chapter I'm going to read, he refers to the work of the Holy Spirit, as in the Greek word is paraklis or paraclete. It's the very word Jesus would use to describe the Holy spirit. In John 14, he said, the Holy Spirit is the paraclete. I won't leave you as orphans. He said, I will send someone to comfort you, to come alongside you, to help you through the hard times. Paraclete. Now, when you break that Greek word apart, para, klesis, para is to come alongside. We get the word parallel from that word. Parallel. Parallel. Are those two lines side beside one another? Parallel. A parable comes from that same word. A parable is a spiritual lesson with a earthly application. A parable, a parallel. And so paraclete is someone who comes alongside of you. Klesis is someone called. Called. Calling, summons. So when Jesus describes the Holy Spirit, he said, the Holy Spirit is the one who will come alongside you, who is called to come alongside you in a crisis. And the ministry of comfort is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of his people, to literally come alongside people who are in trouble to help them. And that's the work of the Holy Spirit. It is comfortable. So with that backdrop, look at 2 Corinthians, chapter one, just a few verses there, and I'll comment on them and we'll go to the house. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3. Paul said, Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now listen to how he describes him here. The father of compassion, Paraklesis, the father of this. He is the author of that. He knows what he's doing. He's the perfecter of the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort. Now notice how he describes him. He comforts us in all of our troubles so that he does that, so that we can comfort those in any trouble. How do we do that? With the comfort we ourselves receive of God. Remember, I've told you many times, you cannot give what you don't have any more than you can come from where you've not been. And one of the things he's doing when he's giving us comfort is he's equipping us. What you've learned when your heart was broken, what you've learned when you've walked through the most difficult times of life, those things you've learned were life lessons that will enable you to help somebody else. That's why a church is qualified. If a church is full of broken people, I said a minute ago, we're all broken. We're broken over different things. We're broken in different places. And when you are broken, the promise of God is the God of all comfort. Will send the Holy Spirit to come alongside of you, the paraclete, the paraklesis, so that he then can help you. So that once you are strong, you are now equipped and enabled to help someone else coming behind you who may need the comfort that you have received from the Lord. Look at verse five. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, meaning that when you know Jesus, you're gonna go through things just simply because of who your father is, that somebody is mad at your dad, they take it out on his kids. And that's what he's saying. People who hated our country took it out on our nation on 9 11. That's the principle. Evil always works that way. And so he went on to say, just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. Verse 6. If we're distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation. Paul is saying, when I go through something, I know God is going to equip me to minister to you more effectively. He said, in your patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. Now listen to that expression, the patient endurance. I don't wanna move away from that till I explain that that is so important. Remember, I've told you before, never pray for patience. Right. You pray for everything. I'm just giving you a little advice. This is free like the rest of it. Don't pray for patience. The Bible says tribulation brings about patience. I would tell you, if you want patience, just cut to the chase and say, God, give me trouble. Cause that's the only way you're gonna get patience. Tribulation brings patience. And the word endurance is an interesting tie to patient endurance. The word endurance is the ability to stand up under. To stand up under. I've told you. Here's a principle man. Don't miss this one either. God will do one of two things. When you're going through a difficult experience. He will take the burden off of you or he will give you the strength to carry the burden. God will do. Invariably, he will do one of those two things. And endurance is not the removal of the pressure you're under. Endurance is not the removal of the burden you're under. Removal of the endurance is the ability to bear up under that burden. Have you ever thought about it? There are some things that God determines in our life that that's necessary. You and I carry necessary burdens. Your immunities are strengthened because you're exposed to certain illnesses. You're strengthened sometimes in resistance training because the Muscles have to be broken down before they can be built up. And sometimes God is preparing us for greater levels by sending us new devils because God is preparing us to greater ministry. I heard Swindoll say years ago that it is doubtful that God can use anyone greatly who has not first of all, been hurt deeply. And oftentimes, the deeper the hurt, the greater the use. And I'm just suggesting to your heart this morning that God will absolutely allow these issues in our life, as our scripture says, to strengthen us. There is this idea again. Look at it again as patient endurance in verse six through of the same sufferings we suffer. And then the last verse, I'll leave you here is verse seven. And our hope for you is firm. Paul is saying, I believe in you, man. I know you guys, you're in a messed up church, you're in a crazy city, you're in the Vegas of the New Testament. I get where you're living, man. It's a tough. You're on the strip, man. I get it. You got a lot of things around you going on. But I believe in you because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, you also are going to share in our comfort. Let me break that apart for you. Give me three quick thoughts and we'll go home. First of all, don't miss the reality of it. The reality of it, everyone will go through something at some point in time where you and I are going to need comfort. A great proof text is in the Old Testament in Psalm 37, Psalm 37. There's two verses there. I think 5 and 6 are changed right in there where he says the steps. Listen to the wording of this. The steps of a good person are ordered by the Lord. Now think about how you say, he's using this analogy a good person is taking. You're getting up in the morning saying, I'm going to work, I'm going to school. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm gonna provide for my family. I have a job. I'm a good person. I'm doing what I'm designed to do. The steps of a good person are ordered by the Lord. He delights in his way. Psalm 37, meaning that maybe you begin your day, you open your Bible, you scroll through your device, you read scripture. Maybe you're reading a proverb and you're reading a psalm. Or maybe you're listening and you listen to a podcast. You're getting some inspiration in the morning and you can just sense God saying, you're starting your day right, man. Physically, you're on top of your game. Spiritually, on top of your game. Emotionally, you're on good. Way to go, you. The Lord delights in his way. And then there's a strange expression in Psalm 37 that almost doesn't seem like it fits there. A person that's doing the right thing, that has God's favor on their life. And then it says, though they fall. Though they fall, good people fall. Good people make mistakes. Bad things happen to good people. Our nation, the greatest nation, the hope for the world is in our nation, bad things happen. In our nation, bad things happen to good people. And God either allows it to happen or he causes it to happen. But he has a reason in everything that happens. And Psalm 37 says good. Should people fall, you're gonna stumble. If you run, you walk fast. If you move, you're gonna fall. And what's interesting about the word he uses to describe someone who stumbles and falls, it indicates something that they weren't planning on. I don't know how many of you are runners. When you go out and run and you're taking that exercise, you. You don't plan to fall. Nobody ever gets up and dresses in the morning. So I'm gonna get my run in, start my day right. And then all of a sudden you say, now when I get about to that quarter mile mark, I am gonna fall. I'm just gonna fall hard. In fact, I'm gonna fall. I may. You know what? I may break something today. That sounds like a plan. Nobody plans on that happening. We had a lady in our church, she was out taking her walk. She walked every day. She's taking care of herself. Stumbled, fell over into a ditch and. And broke her arm. Was she doing anything wrong? No, she was taking care of herself. The steps of a good person are ordered by the Lord. He delights in their way, though they fall. And I'm just saying that the Bible promises they will not utterly be cast down because it says Psalm 37, the Lord ultimately will bring them up. Paraklesis, the one that comes alongside you watch a football game, and all of a sudden one of those players, they're injured on the field, and immediately the game is stopped and the trainers rush out on the field. If it's a pro, they'll probably have a doctor that will rush out on the field. What are you seeing when you see that paraklesis? You're seeing a paraclete. Did you know the Brits use that word, barrister to describe an attorney that's one of the. Not a barista, that's what you get at Starbucks. But a barrister, a lawyer, it's the same idea of a Paraclete. It's someone who comes alongside of you to give you assistance and to give you counsel. Maybe you have friends like that in your life? I do. I have some close friends. Some of them are here this morning in my life that are closer in my safe. They're in my circle. And I'm just saying, you have those people in your life that when you're struggling and you're. And you're trying to navigate through maybe just a season and you just need someone to say, no, you're thinking, it's good, you're doing all right. Or somebody goes, yeah, you might check out. You got a little stinking thinking going on there. But it's pericles. That's what I'm driving at this morning. And I'm just saying everybody in the room, from time to time are going to need somebody to come alongside you and to help you. You have to assess. The trainer gets out there and says, what hurts? And you say, I think it's my leg. And oftentimes, we don't know. Had an evangelist friend of my dad, and he played college football, and for years he struggled with what he thought was a knee injury from football. So he would be in and out of the doctor. They gave him pain meds, and finally he goes to this great doctor who said, I need to operate on your hip. And he said, you don't understand. My hip's fine. It's my knee that hurts. He said, you don't understand. I'm the doctor. Your hip is broken or not broken, but your hip is injured. Your knee is fine. If I fix your hip, it will fix your knee. And what he discovered in that exchange with that physician is sometimes we're not good at analyzing what's wrong with us. So you need someone to come alongside of you who can objectively look at you and say, this is where you are and this is what you need. I talked to a man that I had adopted as my pastor years ago who's in heaven today, Adrian Rogers. And I remember talking to him one day. We'd started the church. We weren't too far into it, and we were facing some challenge, just wanted to make good decisions. And I called him one day, and I was just picking his brain, asking his counsel, and he gave me this great analogy. Matt, you'll love this analogy. He said, I'm in the traffic control tower and I'VE got you on the radar. I know your airspeed. I know exactly where you are. I can tell everything about that plane, and I can tell everything. But he said, here's the difference between where I am and where you are. You're flying the plane. You have to make the call. I can give you advice. I can give you counsel. I can see where you are. I can tell a lot of things about what you've described. But at the end of the day, you have to make calls. And so I'm saying the reality of it is, folks, there are gonna be people that you need who will come alongside of you. And in that moment when they come alongside of you, you have to be willing to receive their counsel, to be willing to trust the things that they're sharing with you, because everyone needs someone from time to time. You know, one of the problems Paul had. And then I'll move on to the second thought. One of the problems Paul had is a problem a lot of us have. We're in a very entrepreneurial part of our country. I mean, you just drive around and you look at all the things that are happening in this area, this region of North Texas. Phenomenal. I mean, it's unbelievable, all that's happening here, the growth and the opportunities that people have. I would say the biggest problem that most people have is. Hear me now. Is. Is not that they're weak. It's not that they're weak. The problem most people have is they're too strong. Meaning that we will not reach out for help until we absolutely have to. And Paul was one of those guys. Paul was driven and he was successful and he was effective and he was educated, and he had it all together. He was Gamaliel, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. He was his stone. He's a military man, a political man, a man of God. Paul, he had it all going on. And I'm just saying that in Paul's life, when you study the trajectory of his life, it wasn't that he was a man that was weak. He was a man that was often too strong. And sometimes the pain hits our life and the difficulty comes into our life to help us realize we need each other. And more than we need each other, we need our heavenly Father. And sometimes the suffering comes and the pain comes because God's going, hello, you remember me? So you have the reality of it. Here's the second thought, and I'll go quick. I'm about to burn my clock here. Think I can finish in four minutes. How many of you have no confidence in me whatsoever. Okay. I shouldn't have even asked. All right. The reality of it. Secondly, I would give you the reliability of it. You can count on it. This is a comfort coming from God that you can count on. Look at verses 10 and 11. Listen to this phrasing. He has delivered, he will deliver, and he will yet deliver. What was Paul saying? He did it in the past, he's doing it in the present, and he will continue to do it in the future. I'll tell you what I do that helps me. When I'm going through a little difficult time. Maybe there's some pressure or some difficulty, a little strain and stress. You go through those seasons and what I do is I remind myself. I remind myself of this fact. God has never failed. Try that on sometimes. Next time you're like me and you may feel sorry for yourself. You ever look at yourself in the mirror and say, God love you. I wish I could just reach in that mirror and hug you. You just want to get up in your own lap sometimes and just hug yourself. You ever do that? I mean, you just gotta feel sometimes when I'm having those moments when you're just kinda down and you just don't know and it's just, oh, man. And all this kind of. I remind myself of the faithfulness of God. Part of the prayer I pray each morning in Lamentations 3, where Jeremiah wakes up and he says, lord, your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. This is the same Jeremiah that quit on him a few years earlier. The same Jeremiah who said, I'm so angry at God, I'll never speak again in his name. And he said, I couldn't stay quiet. I couldn't quit. Because his message was like a burning fire in my bone. I could not walk away. God had a hold of my heart. That same one finally said, when I think of God, his mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Sometimes you gotta. Sometimes you gotta preach to yourself. You know that Paul said on one occasion, I think myself happy. Have you ever thought yourself happy? Nobody's around to make you happy. You just said, I'm gonna think a happy thought. I'm gonna think myself happy. Sometimes you gotta preach to yourself. Sometimes you just gotta be your own comedian. Sometimes you just gotta think yourself happy. And it's so important that we do that. As I've told you before, we came into this world head first. First, everything begins with how you think. And when I think myself happy and I remind myself of the reliability of God's comfort that he has never failed. And in this season, regardless of your circumstance, he will not listen. God will not fail. Let me give you this verse. You're right, I'm not going to quite get there by four minutes, but here. Hang with me. Hebrews 13:5,6. Might add that one to your notes. He has said. God has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. Next part of that. So we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. Put those two thoughts together. He has said verse five, verse six. So that we may say. He said, so that I may say. What is faith? Faith isn't me wishing something to be so so strongly that it becomes so. That's some form of positive affirmation. But it's not faith. Faith is me saying what God has said. Romans 13. God, you said, you said, I'll never leave you. God, you said, I'm a provider. God, you said, you are a protector. God, you said, you said. And you said that so I can say that I'm standing on what he said. Faith. Hebrews 11:1. Faith is the substance of things. What is substance? Sub is something that goes beneath you. Stance is something upon which you stand. Faith is substance. Faith is something beneath me upon which I stand. And he has said, sub, I will never. So that I may say stance. The Lord is my helper. That's the reliability of it. Here's the last one. And honest to God, we have touched third base. I'm heading home. Here are the results of it. What are the results of it? So that we might be able to comfort others. God has comforted me so that I can comfort you. I've told you before, one of the dynamics when Cindy went to heaven was God tenderized my heart in ways I didn't know it needed to be tenderized. And what he did was prepare me to help broken people that would come behind me one day. And I don't know if that's you, and I don't know what the dynamics of our church that has brought you into this place. But I can tell you something happened in me that changed when she went to heaven. I think it created a new level of empathy, a new level of sympathy. Do I do it perfectly? No. There's just one of me. Oftentimes I'll get called on for something that I can't do. I'll have someone else go. Sometimes people understand, sometimes they don't. I try to make the. I'd make mistakes. But as God knows my heart, my heart is to have a church where broken people are drawn and broken people feel the paraklesis, the ministry of comfort to help them so that once equipped, we're able to help other people have a grandbaby in heaven. I can relate to so many people that are going through different types of things in their life. My parents are in heaven. And I'm just suggesting that God will allow us to walk through some of these deep dark valleys that are devastating and, and debilitating and sometimes even discouraging. Because as Paul said, he's equipping you, he's getting you ready. Cause somebody's gonna come behind that may not be as strong as you are. And somebody's gonna come behind you that may not be as equipped as you are. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna enable you through what you've experienced to help another broken person. That's why we do grief share in our churches. We're just helping people navigate through the darkest moments, their life. So there is this powerful ministry, a wonderful ministry called the Ministry of Comfort. And whether you realize it or not, you are uniquely qualified to be a part of that ministry. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for your word. When I considered the Word of God so powerful, practical, you said in Isaiah, your word, once it goes forth, it never comes home empty. Once that word is sent out, it never returns empty. And I pray, as James admonished us, to not just be people who hear the Word, but that will people be people who apply the Word. We've gathered this Sunday morning at our 9:30 in a big old holy huddle. And I pray we have gotten some instruction, I pray we have gotten some direction so that when we break this huddle now, in just a few moments when we go out into the world, we'll be better, more sensitive and better equipped to help people who are struggling. Father, thank you for our nation, thank you for your hand that is upon our country. Thank you for the men and women who so bravely have served and continue to serve and those who will serve in defense of freedom. Thank you Father, for a church that we can gather. A place where we can love you and love our country and love the people of this world. You've commanded us to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost. And Father, as a church we desire to take your love into the world. Father, we just give you praise and thanks for that person who may never have trusted you. Give them the courage. I pray for them now that they'll humbly where they are, say, Lord, you, Jesus, with all that I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. [00:37:18] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week. It.